West Cascade . . . . On the road in North America.

Water, water, water! In water’s ever-yielding nature we also
see tacitly its complement:—the hard, unforgiving quality
of rocks. Having lived and wandered in and through
the some of the great crystalline mountain ranges
in North America and the Alps, I have a special place
in my heart for this eternal back and forth of the rushing
highcountry stream, and the bed of granite which gives
order to its flow.

Here’s is one of Rilke’s most powerful short poems, from
the collection known in English as THE BOOK OF HOURS.
It’s a poem about being stuck, when life seems to have
lost its shimmer, its prospect, its flow, and the whole world
seems to be closing in on one's face:

It's possible I'm moving through the hard veins
of heavy mountains, like the ore does, alone;
I'm already so deep inside, I see no end in sight,
and no distance: everything is getting near
and everything getting near is turning to stone.

I still can't see very far yet into suffering,—
so this vast darkness makes me small;
are you the one: make yourself powerful, break in:
so that your whole being may happen to me,
and to you may happen, my whole cry.
 

Rainer Maria Rilke (tr. Cliff Crego)
from THE BOOK OF HOURS

| go to original German text |

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