The Man Watching by Rainer Maria Rilke
The Man Watching
by Rainer Maria Rilke
trans. Robert Bly
I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can't bear without a friend,
I can't love without a sister.
The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape, like a line in the psalm book,
in seriousness and weight and eternity.
What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.
When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestlers' sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.
Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.
I was at a lovely dinner in Napa when lines from this poem arose, and it reminded me of how much I value and love the last lines of it in particular, that we grow “by being defeated, decisively,” by that which humbles us, that which is larger than ourselves, things beyond us shaping us, and the things truly worth engaging, not the daily petty things that so often consume us. And this needs accompaniment, to weather the storms that shape us, “I can’t bear without a friend.”
The Biblical reference in the central passage is to Jacob wrestling the Angel at the ford of Jabbok in Genesis 32:22-32. Jacob wrestles all night with a mysterious figure — variously identified as God, an angel, or Jacob's own conscience — and at dawn the figure asks to be released, but Jacob refuses without a blessing. The Angel touches Jacob's hip, dislocating it (Jacob will limp for the rest of his life), and gives him a new name: Israel, meaning one who has struggled with God. I love the image of the angel playing sinews as chords, the music made.
