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The hour is striking so close above me by Rainer Maria Rilke English version by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy |
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 |
/ Image by Francisco Moreno /
View All Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke
It has been a while since I last featured something by Rilke. This poem is not as well known as some of his others, but there is so much I like about it.
The hour is striking so close above me
The first verse speaks to us of the immediacy of the present moment. We, along with the poet, awaken to the Now with a widening awareness. Our senses become alive in a new way. But there is more going on than sensory perception.
I feel it now: there's a power in me
to grasp and give shape to my world.
That's a surprising statement. When we really step into the present moment we have an unexpected sense of majesty and command. In some way we become participants in the act of creation.
Rilke continues:
I know that nothing has ever been real
without my beholding it.
All becoming has needed me.
What do you suppose Rilke is trying to say to us? Here is how I understand it. When we are quiet, when we are still, when we fully step into the present moment, we encounter reality in a very different way. We necessarily drop our mental projections about what has happened in the past, what will happen in the future, and, most importantly, what is happening right now.
Let's use a simple example of noticing a tree on a walk. Most of the time, if a tree registers in our awareness at all as we go by, we minimally acknowledge it as "tree" and walk on. That "tree" we noted conjures up in the mind several elements: a canopy of leaves, usually green leaves, a central trunk, a general sense of height. We notice a tree, we think "tree" and we paint this picture in the mind. But we never quite saw the tree. We never saw that tree. We didn't really encounter it. The tree wasn't real. It was an idea of a tree.
If, however, we stop and turn around and really see the tree, truly behold it, without preconception, allowing the tree to simply be as it is and allowing ourselves to become quiet witnesses -- that is when the tree becomes real.
There is a magic in such moments of encounter, when we let them happen. The world comes alive. This is not just something that happens internally in us as the quiet, present witness, but in the people and things that are witnessed. We all wait to be seen, truly seen. Even a tree. The universe is a grand stage of awareness waiting to meet awareness. We all come alive when we see and are seen.
My looking ripens things
and they come toward me, to meet and be met.
 / Photo by Maria Hossmar / |
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