' Like a Herd of Luminous Deer '...

You come and go. The doors swing closed

ever more gently, almost without a shudder.

Of all those who move through the quiet houses,

you are the quietest.


We become so accustomed to you,

we no longer look up

when your shadow falls over the book we are reading

and makes it glow. For all things

sing you: at times

we just hear them more clearly.


Often when I imagine you

your wholeness cascades into many shapes.

You run like a herd of luminous deer

and I am dark, I am forest.


You are a wheel at which I stand,

whose dark spokes sometimes catch me up,

revolve me nearer to the center.

Then all the work I put my hand to

widens from turn to turn.




_ Rainer Maria Rilke, Love Poems to God, The Book of Monastic Life