The hour is striking so close above me

by Rainer Maria Rilke

English version by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy
Original Language German

The hour is striking so close above me,
so clear and sharp,
that all my senses ring with it.
I feel it now: there's a power in me
to grasp and give shape to my world.

I know that nothing has ever been real
without my beholding it.
All becoming has needed me.
My looking ripens things
and they come toward me, to meet and be met.

-- from Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, by Rainer Maria Rilke / Translated by Joanna Macy

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