A Season of Poetry

I finished my summer quarter of school a little over two weeks ago. I've been trying to take advantage of my time off during the interim by pursuing pastimes that I love.
My two weeks off involved social events and spending extra time with my friends. I went to bed late. I slept in exceptionally late only to get up briefly and return to bed and read--novels, short stories, devotions & new poetry (and wrote a few bad poems, as well). Also, making new music mixes, cleaning my house as little as possible, watching episodes of my favorite tv shows & films, downloading Skype and talking to Sarah & Phil in Japan A LOT (yes, joy and elation). I experimented with pastels (my favorite medium, besides photography, words and clay). The only thing missing was a trip (or several) to the beach and the Bahamas (I looked at cruises online and daydreamed).

Monday, 10 September marks the beginning of my last quarter here at SCAD (hopefully).

I picked up a book of Rainer Maria Rilke's poems during one of my recent trips to Barnes and Noble (have I mentioned lately that I love bookstores and books?). Rilke is fast becoming one of my new favorite poets. So, now I'll fill the rest of this post up with his poems. He has been described as "the poet of night and its vastness; the poet of human separations; the poet of thresholds and silences, of landscapes charged with remoteness and expectancy; the poet--especially--of solitude, in its endless inflections."

I know I have mentioned before that I am a fan of short poems. Although Rilke's vary in length and breadth, he communicates his thoughts and existence beautifully in few words.

Happy Reading, all.
And cheers from Hildegarde

INITIAL (from The First Book, Part Two)

Out of infinite desires rise
finite deeds like weak fountains
that fall back in early trembling arcs.
But those, which otherwise in us
keep hidden, our happy strengths--
they come forth in these dancing tears.

INITIAL (from the Second Book, Part One)

Let your beauty manifest itself
without talking and calculation.
You are silent. It says for you: I am.
And comes in meaning thousandfold,
comes at long last over everyone.

EVENING

Slowly the evening puts on the garments
held for it by a rim of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands divide from you,
one going heavenward, one that falls;

and leave you, to neither quite belonging,
not quite so dark as the house sunk in silence,
not quite so surely pledging the eternal
as that which grows star each night and climbs--

and leave you (inexpressibly to untangle)
your life afraid and huge and ripening,
so that it, now bound in and now embracing,
grows alternately stone in you and star.

CLOSING PIECE

Death is great.
We are his completely
with laughing eyes.
When we feels ourselves immersed in life,
he dares to weep
immersed in us.

Note: These selections are copied from Edward Snow's bilingual, translated edition of Rilke's The Book of Images.