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Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, breath, desire, dream, I AM, longing, Rainer Maria Rilke, strong, The Sophia Center for Spirituality
I felt the need for poetry this morning. Everything is gray and drenched with last night’s rain – definitely Friday. Rainer Maria Rilke’s Book of Hours had been sitting silently on the shelf under my side table for a long time waiting for attention. The subtitle of this translation by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy is Love Poems to God. I read page 81 as a continuing stream of words, a paragraph, which seems suitable to me right now.
I am, you anxious one. Don’t you sense me, ready to break into being at your touch? My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings. Can’t you see me standing before you cloaked in stillness? Hasn’t my longing opened in you from the beginning as fruit opens on a branch? I am the dream you are dreaming. When you want to awaken, I am that wanting: I grow strong in the beauty you behold. And with the silence of stars I enfold your cities made by time.
Can you feel the power within those words? The desire that is waiting for a response? The reason I could not allow a breath between the lines but plunged in and kept swimming until the end? I need to sit now in the silence of which he speaks, even though the morning begins to lighten everything inside and out. Are you there with me?
In 