Rilke: “How we squander our hours of pain”

Rainer Maria Rilke

“Someday, emerging at last from the violent insight, let me sing out jubilation and praise to assenting angels.
Let not even one of the clearly-struck hammers of my heart fail to sound because of a slack, a doubtful,
or a broken string. Let my joyfully streaming face make me more radiant; let my hidden weeping arise and blossom. How dear you will be to me then, you nights of anguish. Why didn’t I kneel more deeply to accept you,
inconsolable sisters, and surrendering, lose myself in your loosened hair. How we squander our hours of pain.
How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration to see if they have an end. Though they are really our winter-enduring foliage, our dark evergreen,
our season in our inner year–, not only a season in time–, but are place and settlement, foundation and soil
and home.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus

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