You Who Allow Yourselves to Feel

You Who Allow Yourselves to Feel 

By Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)

You who let yourselves feel: enter the breathing

that is more than your own.

Let it brush your cheeks

as it divides and rejoins behind you.

Blessed ones, whole ones,

you where the heart begins:

You are the bow that shoots the arrows

and you are the target.

Fear not the pain. Let its weight fall back

into the earth;

for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.

The trees you planted in childhood have grown

too heavy. You cannot bring them along.

Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.

In Praise of Mortality: Rilke's Duino Elegies & Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke / Translated by Joanna Macy