Waiting to return to the mountain | Waiting Still Day 17

A Rilke poem for resolve in waiting
Day Seventeen | Waiting Still

Words from Rainer Maria Rilke to aid you in you waiting:

The kings of the world are old and feeble.
They bring forth no heirs.

Their sons are dying before they are men,
and their pale daughters
abandon themselves to the brokers of violence.

Their crowns are exchanged for money
and melted down into machines,
and there is no health in it.

Does the ore feel trapped
in coins and gears? In the petty life
imposed upon it
does it feel homesick for earth?

If metal could escape
from coffers and factories,
and the torn-open mountains
close around it again,

we would be whole.

____

(Rilke, who lived and wrote at the turn of the 20th century in Austria, is such a potent voice for now. And Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy have translated his work so beautifully, as with the poem above. Listen to them recite more Rilke in the podcast episode from Emergence Magazine. Or pick up a copy of their translation of Rilke’s Book of Hours.)