Whom can we ever turn to

“Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need?

Not angels, not humans, and already the knowing animals are aware

that we are not really at home in our interpreted world.

Perhaps there remains for us some tree on a hillside, which every day we can take into our vision;

there remains for us yesterday's street and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease

when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.

Oh and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinite space gnaws at our faces.

Whom would it not remain for--that longed-after, mildly disillusioning presence,

which the solitary heart so painfully meets.

Is it any less difficult for lovers?

But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate.

Don't you know yet? 

Fling the emptiness out of your arms into the spaces we breathe;

perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.”

from the First Elegy, Duino Elegies (translated by Stephen Mitchell)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

July 27

I’m reading- A Year with Rilke-

Daily Readings from the Best of Rainer  Maria Rilke 

by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows