The Swan by Rainer Maria Rilke

attentionthe sacredthresholdresilience
Written By Gayle Karen Young

The Swan
by Rainer Maria Rilke
trans. Robert Bly

This clumsy living that moves lumbering
as if in ropes through what is still undone,
reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.

And to die, which is the letting go
of the ground we stand on and cling to every day,
is like the swan, when he nervously lets himself down
into the water, which receives him gaily
and which flows joyfully under
and after him, wave after wave,
while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm,
is pleased to be carried, each moment more fully grown,
more like a king, further and further on.

I love the transformation of the swan, this awkward creature on land and the relating of this poem to the tether of undone things, and then the lowering of the swan into the water and how he is received. This is what contemplative practices rehearses across a lifetime.

Rilke, The Swan. From New Poems (Neue Gedichte, 1907), the breakthrough volume Rilke wrote in Paris under the influence of Auguste Rodin (whom he served as secretary)

Gayle Karen Young
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