Dear Darkening Ground
{Rainer Maria Rilke}
Dear darkening ground,
you’ve endured so patiently the walls we’ve built,
perhaps you’ll give the cities one more hour
and grant the churches and cloisters two.
And those that labor-maybe you’ll let their work
grip them another five hours – or seven
before you become forest again, and
widening wilderness
in that hour of inconceivable terror
when you take back your name
from all things.
Just give me a little more time!
I want to love the things
as no one has thought to love them,
until they’re real and ripe and worthy of you.
I want only seven days – seven
on which no one has ever written himself –
seven pages of solitude.
There will be a book that includes these pages,
and she who takes it in her hands
will sit staring at it for a long time,
until she feels that she is being held
and you are writing.
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