Day 255 of Year 2 (Actually Day 260)
It must be spring that's driving my use of yellow. I feel it's glow waking me up and stirring things inside that have been quiet too long. To me trees have always symbolized strength. I admire their quiet growth and evolution. Nothing dramatic, just the gentle unfolding of a promise planted long ago. Tonight's poem is from Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus, probably my favorite book of poetry ever.
Sonnets to Orpheus Book I, I
By Rilke, Trans. Stephen Mitchell
A tree ascended there. Oh pure transcendence!
Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear!
And all things hushed. Yet even in that silence
a new beginning, beckoning, change appeared.
Creatures of stillness crowded from the bright
unbound forest, out of their lairs and nests;
and it was not from any dullness, not
from fear, that they were so quiet in themselves,
but from just listening. Bellow, roar, shriek
seemed small inside their hearts. And where there had been
at most a makeshift hut to receive the music,
a shelter nailed up out of their darkest longing,
with an entryway that shuddered in the wind-
you built a temple deep inside their hearing.
From Sonnets to Orpheus https://amzn.to/2Jl4VZk (My book is out of print, but this should be the same translation)