In Pursuit of Poetry

March 26 - Rainer Maria Rilke - The Poet

March 26, 2018

The Poet
by Rainer Maria Rilke

O hour of my muse: why do you leave me,
Wounding me by the wingbeats of your flight?
Alone: what shall I use my mouth to utter?

How shall I pass my days? And how my nights?

I have no one to love. I have no home.
There is no center to sustain my life.
All things to which I give myself grow rich
and leave me spent, impoverished, alone.

I am not sure if my meaning for this poem is correct, but I get the sense that the poet or artist of any creative act, feels a sense of loss without their muse - that creative spark that moves through them. Sure she is able to let other things grow - things she sets her mind to, but without a voice to create, all that leaves her spent, impoverished and alone. It is in the writing that she makes sense of her world... and brings a fullness that cannot exist without writing about it.

When the writing does not come, even the voice has difficulty formulating and articulating thoughts. There is 'no center to sustain my life".

For me, I find that writing has always been my way of making sense of things; of taking on things that have come at me. Writing lifts me up above the day to day grind and gives it definition; gives it colour and focus; gives it breadth and life.
Not creating leaves me cranky and out of sorts. Coming to the page is far more fulfilling than avoiding the blank wall of it. Writing clears the jumbled gunk, and helps me find the diamonds in the muck.

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