inside out

This is a week we take a break. A break from work, from school, from the drill of the speedy mornings, from being indoors. This is also a week of taking a break from writing. A conscious one, not a “dragging my feet feeling guilty about not writing” kind of break.

And so here’s only a tiny post for you. A poem from Rainer Maria Rilke that spoke to me about how moving out of something is going into something else, about creating a world and letting it grow (the German original version is below).

The Way In
Rainer Maria Rilke

Whoever you are: some evening take a step
out of your house, which you know so well.
Enormous space is near, your house lies where it begins,
whoever you are.
Your eyes find it heard to tear themselves
from the sloping threshold, but with your eyes
slowly, slowly, lift one black tree
up, so it stands against the sky: skinny, alone.
With that you have made the world. The world is immense
and like a word that is still growing in silence.
In the same moment that your will grasps it,
your eyes, feeling its subtlety, will leave it…

Eingang
Rainer Maria Rilke

Wer du auch seist: am Abend tritt hinaus
aus deiner Stube, drin du alles weißt;
als letztes vor der Ferne liegt dein Haus:
wer du auch seist.
Mit deinen Augen, welche müde kaum
von der verbrauchten Schwelle sich befrein,
hebst du ganz langsam einen schwarzen Baum
und stellst ihn vor den Himmel: schlank, allein.
Und hast die Welt gemacht. Und sie ist groß
und wie ein Wort, das noch im Schweigen reift.
Und wie dein Wille ihren Sinn begreift,
lassen sie deine Augen zärtllich los…