Imaginal Journal
Imagination is Medicine
Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower by Rainer Maria Rilke
Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.
“Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower” by Rainer Maria Rilke from Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29.
Translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows.
I’m Darker Than My Daughter. Here’s Why It Matters.
Norma Newton and her daughter at their home in Los Angeles. Photo Credit: Carolina Adame
Powerful reflections on colorism from a mother.
Via: New York Times
Small Truths and Other Surprises with Jericho Brown | ON BEING
Image by DEEN, © All Rights Reserved.
“The poet Jericho Brown reminds us to bear witness to the complexity of the human experience, to interrogate the proximity of violence to love, and to look and listen closer so that we might uncover the small truths and surprises in life. His presence is irreverent and magnetic, as the high school students who joined us for this conversation experienced firsthand at the 2018 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. And now he’s won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Editor’s note: This interview discusses sexual violence and rape.”
Via: ON BEING