Small Stones for Jan. 22 and 23, 2014

Yesterday I was trying to fix my laptop (unsuccessfully!) and didn’t write a small stone, so today’s post is a two-fer. The two selections somewhat respond to one another, I think. The first is titled If I Cried Out, and comes from the First Duino Elegy. The second is Sing, My Heart, Sonnets to Orpheus II, 21. Links to them are here: http://yearwithrilke.blogspot.ca/2011/01/if-i-cried-out.html

and here (scroll down to the second poem): http://www.windgrove.com/blog/two-poems-two-images/

There are other translations where the wording may be different; I try to find ones that match A Year With Rilke.

Jan. 22, 2014

If I cried out, who
in the hierarchies of angels
would hear me? –Rilke, the First Duino Elegy

Song of the Angels by William Bouguereau, 1881. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If angels surround us waiting
for us to call to them, as someone
said the other day on Doctor Oz,
why do their answers elude us?

Or is theirs the other inner voice, muffled
by the loudness of our incessant questions,
our cries so frequent we can’t hear
the answers between the thoughts?

–CAS

Jan. 23, 2014

Whatever image you take within you deeply,
even for a moment in a lifetime of pain,
see how it reveals the whole—the great tapestry.
–Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus II, 21

In this moment, I am searching
for answers still hidden,
one great image of what it all means.

This is the unanswered question