The Departure of the Prodigal Son
To go forth now
from all the entanglement
that is ours and yet not ours,
that, like the water in an old well,
reflects us in fragments, distorts what we are.
From all that clings like burrs and brambles—
to go forth
and see for once, close up, afresh,
what we had ceased to see—
so familiar it had become.
To glimpse how vast and how impersonal
is the suffering that filled your childhood.
Yes, to go forth, hand pulling away from hand.
Go forth to what? To uncertainty,
to a country with no connections to us
and indifferent to the dramas of our life.
What drives you to go forth? Impatience, instinct,
a dark need, the incapacity to understand.
To bow to all this.
To let go—
even if you have to die alone.
Is this the start of a new life?
By Rainer Maria Rilke, From “A Year With Rilke” Translated and Edited by Joanna Macy & Anita Barrows
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Have some poems you treasure that you’d like to share with fellow aid workers and do-gooders? Please send them my way at email.howmatters@gmail.com!
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Thank you for this, tastefully and delicately, done.
A favorite poem by a favorite poet.
I was a farm boy too for a while before I turned into a poet who when heaving bales of hay did not know it but later came to rhyme with his Time.
Keep safe and free in this distempered Time of Covid1984.
Jack, Responsibly Free, New Zealand
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