Saturday, February 28, 2009
The Apple Orchard
The Apple Orchard
(after a poem by Rilke)
I think it is enough,
this wandering in the descending twilight
beneath these welcoming boughs
once ripe with the sap of new beginnings,
now hung with later promise.
Like us they hold the recollection
of passage from seed
to bloom,
their home of buried earth transformed to the light
of upward reaching arms.
Already they bow
with the weight of coming harvest,
and we too
move steadily where our necessity
takes us, beyond grief or doubt,
final fruition.
Dorothy Walters
February 26, 2009
Here is the Rilke poem which inspired me:
The Apple Orchard
Come let us watch the sun go down
and walk in twilight through the orchard's green.
Does it not seem as if we had for long
collected, saved and harbored within us
old memories? To find releases and seek
new hopes, remembering half-forgotten joys,
mingled with darkness coming from within,
as we randomly voice our thoughts aloud
wandering beneath these harvest-laden trees
reminiscent of Durer woodcuts, branches
which, bent under the fully ripened fruit,
wait patiently, trying to outlast, to
serve another season's hundred days of toil,
straining, uncomplaining, by not breaking
but succeeding, even though the burden
should at times seem almost past endurance.
Not to falter! Not to be found wanting!
Thus must it be, when willingly you strive
throughout a long and uncomplaining life,
committed to one goal: to give yourself!
And silently to grow and to bear fruit.
Rainer Maria Rilke
(Selected Poems, trans. by Albert Ernest Flemming)
(Photo from Panhala)
