Frenemies, Part VII

I used to hate poetry universally, but over the years I’ve *slowly* come to *occasionally* appreciate the way poets are able to articulate ideas and emotions I’m dispossessed of words to properly express. From time to time I’ll be grabbing coffee with a friend—trying to piece together a word of encouragement, or struggling to properly explain my hot mess of a life, or failing to put words to gratitude or hope or pain—and a snippet of a poem will come to mind, an epiphany, a perfect encapsulation of empathy I could never achieve on my own. I’m stopped dead in my tracks at the significance of pronounced emotion, and I’m grateful for the staggering power of the written word.

Today I’m feelin Go to the Limits of Your Longing by Rilke, and want to celebrate it here.

You can read more about my reluctant friendship with poetry here, and you can see more poems I love to not hate here.

* * *

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

—Rilke
Book of Hours, I 59