Favourite Poems....

[Ahanu]

The Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke

Second part, XIII

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it will your heart survive.

Be forever dead in Eurydice--more gladly arise
into the seamless life proclaimed in your song
Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days,
be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.

Be--and yet know the great void where all things begin,
the infinite source of your own intense vibration,
so that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent.

To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb
creatures in the world's full reserve, the unsayable sums,
joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.

I like the way he tells us to be in the present moment. Live as intensly as possible in the here and now. I was hesitant in sharing this poem because I love his poems so much that I want to keep them all to myself.

[Virtual_Cliff]

The Trees : Philip Larkin

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.