A little bit of Rilke

I’m not quite sure what’s happened to the last couple of weeks, but I feel like I’ve entered an intense period of parenthood with both girls clamouring for attention all day. Every little moment of space I get, I use to recover enough energy for the rest of the day so apologies for the lack of posts.

In the meantime, I’m not really into poetry – for one thing, I can’t tell what’s good or not, and I struggle with texts that feel like pompous self-indulgence that everybody else raves about, however I do have a soft spot for Rainer Maria Rilke. I bought the Book of Hours a few years back on a whim and I fell in love with it; it’s full of beautiful things, and the poem below is my favourite.

 

 

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A Christmas Poem

In the run up to Christmas, I thought I would share with you a poem by a writer I like very much, Madeleine L’Engle.

He came, quietly impossible,

Out of a young girl’s womb,

A love as amazingly marvellous,

As his bursting from the tomb.

This child was fully human,

This child was wholly God.

The Hands of All Love fashioned him

Of mortal flesh and bone and blood,

The ordinary so extraordinary

The stars shook in the sky

As the Lord of all the universe

Was born to live, to love, to die.

He came, quietly impossible,

Nothing will never be the same:

Jesus, the Light of every heart-

The God we know by Name.