Great Poem: Ranier Marie Rilke's "Autumn Day"

I know it's spring, but something made me think of this poem today. Beautiful.

Autumn Day

Lord: it is time. The summer was immense. Lay your shadow on the sundials and let loose the wind in the fields. Bid the last fruits to be full; give them another two more southerly days, press them to ripeness, and chase the last sweetness into the heavy wine.  Whoever has no house now will not build one  anymore. Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long  time, will stay up, read, write long letters, and wander the avenues, up and down, restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.

Great Quote

Great advice... it's a reminder to me that despite all the advice you may receive from people and the conventions of society, that no one can fully understand the experience of each individual, and that too live honestly means accepting your reality for what it is-- all one's thoughts and feeling and perceptions-- and using that as your guide through life. Fuck what other people say, I say.

"We must accept our reality as vastly as we possibly can; everything, even the unprecedented, must be possible within it."- Ranier Maria Rilke

Great Poem: "Archaic Torso of Apollo"

This is probably my favorite poem. I don't have a lot of time to comment on it at the moment, but let me just say this is the only poem that every time I read it calls me to look at my life and change it.


Archaic Torso of Apollo Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Stephen Mitchell

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

Great Quote

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions" -Ranier Maria Rilke

(If you don't have Letters to a Young Poet, you should pick up a copy. It is sort of my guide through life.)