It is possible that I am pushing through solid rock
It is possible that I am pushing through solid rock
by Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows
It is possible that I am pushing through solid rock, like a vein of ore, encased. And am so far in, I see no end, and no distance: everything is close to my face, and everything close to my face is stone.
I am not yet wise in grief — so this great darkness makes me small. But if it’s you: make yourself fierce, break in: Then your great transforming will happen to me, and to you, the fullness of my cry.
This is my favorite translation of these lines, and honestly, the reason poetry came into my life. My friend Bob Anderson left this on my answering machine as I was driving cross-country post-divorce (the first one), and I felt utterly stunned. “I am not yet wise in my grief so this great darkness makes me small.” I called him up and said, “Who said that?!!” I couldn’t believe someone had so named the experience of the darkness of grief so beautifully, and it was absolutely the moment that I started looking for poetry everywhere to name the parts of the human experience I couldn’t yet name.
