Pure poetry

Anyone who knows me well, knows how much I love poetry. The interesting thing to me is that this is something I didn't inherit, didn't get by parental influence or even from peer pressure or friends. Poetry is uniquely me and mine. I do not know from where the love of it came, except from the core of my real self. I find it soothing, enlightening, uplifting and inspiring. I love the beauty of the words. I love the painting of a work of art through beautiful phrases. I collect poems like I collect rocks, or quotes. It must also be connected to my love of reading and books, and while I can recycle a good novel, or let it go, or loan it out, I don't seem to be able to let go of my poetry books. They're the only books I reread. So, in honor of my love of poetry, I'm printing a new discovery of an old poem.

THE MAN WATCHING
by Rainier Maria Rilke
Translated by Robert Bly

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far off fields say things
I can't bear without a friend,
I can't love without a sister.

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
and landscape, like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we fight is so small!
What struggles with us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the angel, who appeared
to the wrestler in the Old Testament:
When the wrestler's sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.
Whoever was beaten by this Angel,
(who often simply declined the fight),
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.

Winning does not tempt that one.
This is how he grows: by being defeated,
decisively, by constantly greater beings.