Evening Poetry, July 21

You can find this poem in The Book of A Monastic Life in Rilke’s Book of Hours.

I,51

Only in our doing can we grasp you.

Only with our hands can we illuminate you.

The mind is but a visitor:

it thinks us out of our world.

Each mind fabricates itself.

We sense its limits, for we have made them.

And just when we would flee them, you come

and make yourself an offering.

I don’t want to think a place for you.

Speak to me from everywhere.

Your Gospel can be comprehended

without looking for its source.

When I go toward you

it is with my whole life.

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