More lines from Rilke

This season seems unending at moments lately. Hard slogging, and crashing waves of emotion that feel as if they're drowning me.

I was flipping through "Rilke's Book of Hours" again tonight, and came across a few lines that speak to the way I'm feeling again lately.

I yearn to be held
in the great hands of your heart -
oh let them take me now.

Into them I place these fragments, my life,
and you, God - spend them however you want.
(pg. 139)

~~~

In deep nights I dig for you like treasure
For all I have seen
that clutters the surface of my world
is poor and paltry substitute
for the beauty of you
that has not happened yet....

My hands are bloody from digging.
I lift them, hold them open in the wind,
so they can branch like a tree.

Reaching, these hands would pull you out of the sky
as if you had shattered there,
dashed yourself to pieces in some wild impatience.

What is this I feel falling now,
falling on this parched earth,
softly,
like a spring rain?
(pg. 187)

~~~

Your first word of all was light,
and time began. Then for long you were silent.

Your second word was man, and fear began,
which grips us still.

Are you about to speak again?
I don't want your third word.

Sometimes I pray: Please don't talk.
Let all your doing be by gesture only.
Go on writing in faces and stone
what your silence means.

Be our refuge from the wrath
that drove us out of Paradise.

Be our shepherd, but never call us -
we can't bear to know what's ahead.
(pg. 103)