Zwischen den Hammern besteht unser Herz

(Between the hammers our heart endures)

Here is the time for the sayable, here its home.
Speak and avow it. More than ever
things that can be experienced fall away,
shunted aside and superseded by
unseeable acts,

acts under crusts that readily shatter

when the inner workings outgrow them

and seek new containment

Between the hammers

our heart endures, like the tongue

between the teeth, which yet

continues to praise.

-from "Die Neunte Elegie", Rainer Rilke

Rilke's poetry has captured me this morning. I know not what time it is, as the poems somehow flow continuously on the pages and I just keep reading and underlining lines from his "Duino Elegies", where he writes of losses in such beautiful language. A German writer, the poems are all in his native tongue, so I am reading a mere translation, which probably does not match up to the German language. I like the book I have of Rilke's poetry because it includes the full German text on the left side of the page and the English translation on the right side. This way, when I learn German (one of my goals is to learn French and German) I will be able to compare words and attempt to read the German side.

Rilke's "Duino Elegies" is a collection of 10 elegies, or long poems lamenting losses. Traditionally an elegy is full of sorrow and lamenting over the loss of something, but Rilke's elegies are also mixed with questions:

O trees of life, when does your winter come?

Who hasn't waited anxiously before the heart's curtain?

He doesn't provide answers to such questions, but writes with elegant description further musings on human nature. Alongside those questions are lines of truth that grab my attention.

But we, giving ourselves to one thing,

feel it's at the expense of another. Conflict

is our nature.

And while I have read many poems lamenting loss, it can leave one with a desolate feeling when the poet doesn't have the hope in Christ. But Rilke's underlying sense of hope is obvious, reminding us that while a sadness can consume us, we can still offer praise to God. Life is a fleeting vapor, at times passing through darkness, yet there is always hope.

But it seems everything

keeps us in the dark. Look, the trees are; the houses

we live in still stand. We alone

go past them like an exchange of vapors.

And things conspire to tell us nothing, half

in shame, perhaps, half in unspoken hope.

-from "Die Zweite Elegie"