So, I've already got that sentimental feeling going on. "Hasta luego" began with my colleagues and students as school ended on Thursday. I had awesome classes of freshman and juniors this year--my juniors will be graduated before I return to Jefferson. They are a group I am certain will go and do some pretty cool things out there. (But Jags, are you listening? Remember "China".) By the end of each year, I find a way to introduce my students to one of my favorite artists Trevor Hall and my favorite poet Rainer Maria Rilke. (I highly recommend Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties.) As I failed to fit Trevor Hall in this spring, mis estudiantes, check him out on iTunes. Rilke, on the other hand, I snuck onto the end of their final. There is little certainty in my world. I am often questioning everything really. Rilke leads me back to believe in something. Undefinable. This poem, thanks to the beautiful calligraphy of my Aunt Abby, hangs above my bed in a series of gold antique frames:
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 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.
Book of Hours I 59
Have you ever read the adolescent lit book series Shiver? One of the characters loooves Rilke.
ReplyDeleteThat poem (verse?) is beautiful.