Be Earth Now – Rainer Maria Rilke recited by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast, I'm a manual von Lee, host of this show an executive editor of Emergence Magazine Located on the unseated ancestral lands of the coast me walk people in present-day marine county Each week we feature interviews stories poetry and author narrated essays exploring the threads connecting ecology culture and spirituality Earlier this year our friend the remarkable echo Buddhist philosopher Joanna Macy passed away at age 96 Among her many gifts. She was a seminal translator of the great 20th century poet Reina Maria Rilca Over 25 years ago Joanna collaborated with award-winning poet Anita Barros to translate Rilca's collection of poetry the book of hours Love poems to God which explores the nature of God through divinely received prayers In our final episode of the year we returned to a selection of these translations excerpted from the album Be Earth Now read by Joanna and the Nita These poems speak to the beauty mystery and longing present in both world scene and unseen The unknowability of the divine and the union of nature and the transcendent We share them this holiday period and the hope they nourish the heart and spirit as this year draws to a close Inviting us to reflect on all that is given and all that fades away Ich lebe mein Leben in Vaxen in Langen I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world I may not complete this last one, but I give myself to it I circle around God around the primordial tower I've been circling for thousands of years And I still don't know Am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song Ich lebe meines visens dunkelstunden I love the dark hours of my being My mind deepens into them There I can find as in old letters the days of my life already lived And held like a legend and understood Then the knowing comes I can open to another life This wide and timeless So I am sometimes like a tree rustling over a grave site And making real the dream of the one it's living roots embrace A dream once lost amid sorrows and songs Ich glaube an alles noch nie gesagte I believe in all that has never yet been spoken I want to free what waits within me so that what no one has dared to wish for May for once spring clear Without my contriving If this is arrogant God forgive me But this is what I need to say May what I do flow from me like a river No forcing and no holding back The way it is with children Then in these swelling and ebbing currents These deepening tides moving out returning I will sing you as no one ever has Streaming through widening channels Into the open sea You I am you anxious one Don't you sense me ready to break into being at your touch My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings Can't you see me standing before you cloaked in stillness Hasn't my longing ripened in you from the beginning as flute ripens on a branch I am the dream you are dreaming When you want to awaken I am that wanting I grow strong in the beauty you behold And with the silence of stars I unfold your cities made by time So Now my prayer is this You my own deep soul trust me I will not betray you My blood is alive with many voices telling me I am made of longing What mystery breaks over me now In its shadow I come into life For the first time I am alone with you You my power to feel 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 too And those that labor let their work grip them another five hours or seven Before you become forest again and water 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 A little more time I want to love the things as no one is thought to love them Until they're real and worthy of you Lord the great cities are lost in rotting Their time is running out The people there live harsh and heavy crowded together weary of their own routines Beyond them waits and breathes your earth But where they are it cannot reach them Their children waste their days on doorsteps Always in the same shadow They don't know that somewhere wind is blowing through a field of flowers The young girls have only strangers to parade before And no one sees them truly So chilled they close And in back rooms they live out the nagging years of disappointed motherhood They're dying as long and hard to finish hard to surrender what you never received Their exit has no grace or mystery It's a little death hanging dry and measly Like a fruit inside them that never ripened De Cernica del Vescent Uldt on Verdecaina Elbenhaven The kings of the world are old and feeble They bring forth no airs Their sons are dying before they are men And their pale daughters Abandon themselves to the brokers of violence Their crowns are exchanged for money And melted down into machines and there is no health in it Does the ore feel trapped in coins and gears In the petty life imposed upon it Does it feel homesick for earth If metal could escape from coffers and factories And the torn open mountains close around it again We would be whole Alice Vertvira gross design on Gavartik All will come again into its strength The fields undivided the waters undamped The trees towering and the walls built low And in the valley's people as strong and varied as the land And no churches where God is imprisoned and lamented like a trapped and wounded animal The house is welcoming all who knock And a sense of boundless offering in all relations and in you and me No yearning for an afterlife No looking beyond No belittling of death But only longing for what belongs to us And serving earth Lest we remain unused You are not surprised at the force of the storm You've seen it growing The trees flee Their flight sets the boulevard streaming And you know He whom they flee is the one you move toward All your senses sing him as you stand at the window The weeks stood still in summer The trees blood rose Now you feel it wants to sink back into the source of everything You thought you could trust that power when you plucked the fruit Now it becomes a riddle again And you again a stranger Summer was like your house You knew where each thing stood Now you must go out into your heart is onto a vast plain Now the immense loneliness begins The days go numb The winds sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves Through the empty branches the sky remains It is what you have Be earth now and even song Be the ground lying under that sky Be modest now Like a thing ripened until it is real So that he who began it all Can feel you when he reaches for you The hour is striking so close above me So clear and sharp That all my senses ring with it I feel it now There's a power in me to grasp and give shape to my world I know that nothing has ever been real Without my beholding it All becoming has needed me My looking ripens things And they come toward me To meet and be met You God speaks to each of us as he makes us Then walks with us silently out of the night These are the words we dimly hear You sent out beyond your recall Go to the limits of your longing Embody me Flare up like flame and make big shadows I can move in Let everything happen to you Beauty and terror Just keep going No feeling is final Don't let yourself lose me Nearby is the country they call life You will know it by its seriousness Give me your hand You darkness of whom I am born I love you more than the flame That limits the world to the circle it alumans And excludes all the rest But the dark embraces everything Shapes and shadows, creatures and me People, nations Just as they are It lets me imagine a great presence Sturring beside me I believe in the night It feels as though I make my way through massive rock Like a vein of ore In case, alone I am so deep inside it I can't see the path or any distance Everything is close and everything closing in on me has turned to stone Since I still don't know enough about pain This terrible darkness makes me small If it's you though Press down hard on me Break in that I may know the weight of your hand and you the fullness of my cry I want to praise him Loud as a trumpet in the vanguard of an army I will run ahead and proclaim My words will be sweet to hear My people will drink them in like wine and not get drunk And on spring nights when few remain around my tent I will make music as soft as northern aprils That hover late and tender around each leaf So my voice becomes both a breath and a shout One prepares the way The other surrounds my loneliness with angels Only as a child am I awake and able to trust that after every fear and every night I will behold you again However often I get lost However far my thinking strays I know you will be here right here Time trembling around you To me it is as if I were at once infant, boy, man and more I feel that only as its circles is abundance found I thank you deep power that works me ever more lightly in ways I can't make out The day's labor grows simple now And like a holy face held in my dark hands How surely gravity's law strong as an ocean current Takes hold of even the smallest thing and pulls it toward the heart of the world Each thing each stone blossom child is held in place Only we in our arrogance push out beyond what we each belong to For some empty freedom If we surrendered to earth's intelligence we could rise up rooted like trees Instead we entangle ourselves in knots of our own making and struggle lonely and confused So like children we begin again to learn from the things Because they are in God's heart They have never left him This is what the things can teach us To fall Patiently to trust our heaviness Even a bird has to do that before he can fly You are the future, the red sky before sunrise over the fields of time You are the cock's crow when night is done you are the dew and the bells of matins Maiden stranger mother death You create yourself in ever changing shapes that rise from the stuff of our days Unsung Unmourned Undescribed like a forest we never knew You are the deep innerness of all things The last word that can never be spoken To each of us you reveal yourself differently To the ship as coastline To the shore as a ship [Music] Emergence magazine is an initiative of Kaliapaya Foundation Our original essays in depth interviews, films and rich multimedia Explore the threats connecting ecology, culture and spirituality Our theme music is composed by Logan Stally and H. Scott Salinas This podcast is edited by Erika Nyingar and produced by Shana Quinn and a manual lonely with writing by Lucy Wormald. You can subscribe to our podcast wherever podcasts are found To subscribe to our newsletter order our new print edition and check out more of our stories visit emergencemagazine.org [Music]