I Am Too Alone in the World

I Am Too Alone In The World, And Not Alone Enough

-Ranier Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Bly

I am too alone in the world, and not alone enough

to make every minute holy.

I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough

just to lie before you like a thing,

shrewd and secretive.

I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will,

as it goes into action,

and in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times

when something is coming near,

I want to be with those who know secret things

or else alone.

I want to be a mirror for your whole body,

and I never want to be blind, or be too old

to hold up your heavy and swaying picture.

I want to unfold.

I don’t want to stay folded anywhere,

because when I am folded, there I am a lie.

And I want my grasp of things

true before you. I want to describe myself

like a painting that I looked at

closely for a long time,

like a saying that I finally understood,

like the pitcher I use every day,

like the face of my mother,

like a ship

that took me safely

through the wildest storm of all.

This post of Rilke’s poem is the first of three posts to come. They belong together. This poem touches me, and introduces the next two blogs, which will be posted tomorrow and the day after.

You may be wondering why this triptych.

Sometimes I feel alone, like my father in the blog to come (Crazy for the Storm) and the rabbit in the woodpile (the third panel in the triptych). It is often easier to capture aloneness in others than it is to do so in ourselves.

This may not make sense, or mean anything to you now, but I think it will after reading the following two pieces.

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