Alone as Ice

"To return to the subject of aloneness: It becomes increasingly clear that it is basically not something we can choose to have or not to have.  We simply are alone.  One can delude one's self and act as though it were no so - that's all.  How much better, however, that we concede we are solitary beings; yes, that we assume it to be true."

Hallelujah.

More from Rilke's Letters To A Young Poet, translation by Joan M. Burnham.  (c) 2000.

Madonna v. Rilke, ROUND #2

"Your first word of all was light,

and time began.  Then for a long time you were silent.

Your second word was man, and fear began,

which grips us still.

Are you about to speak again?

I don't want to know your third word.

Sometimes I pray: Please don't talk.

Let all your doing be by gesture only.

Go on writing in faces and stone

what your silence means."

Excerpted from Rilke's Book of Hours.  Translation by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy. (c) 1996.