Matilda Randighieri

“Why [...]
must we still be human
and long for further fate?
[...] because to be here
means so very much.
Because this fleeting sphere
appears to need us [...],
us… the most fleeting of all.
Once and once only for
each thing – then no more.
For us as well. Once.
Then no more… ever.
But to have been as one,
though but the once,
with this world,
never can be undone.

So we persevere,
attempting to resolve it
and contain it in our grasp [...]
We cannot take our insight with us
into the other realm, no matter
how painfully gathered.
Nor anything which happened.
Not one thing; neither suffering
nor the heaviness of our lot.
Not the hard earned lore of love,
nor that which is beyond speaking.
What can these things matter,
later, underneath the stars?
Better these things remain unsaid.
When the rambler returns
from the mountain to the vale,
he carries no esoteric clump
of soil, but some hard won word,
pure and simple: a blossom of
gentian, yellow and blue.
Could it not be that we
are here to say: house,
bridge, cistern, gate,
pitcher, flowering tree,
window-or at most:
monolith… skyscraper?
But to say them in a way
they, themselves, never
knew themselves to be? [...]”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies