flemmings shared this with us on my lj
Onto a Vast Plain
X-X
Rainer Maria Rilke
translation from German by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows
X-X
You are not surprised at the force of the storm—
you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:
he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window.
X-X
The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees' blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought
you could trust that power
when you plucked the fruit:
now it becomes a riddle again
and you again a stranger.
X-X
Summer was like your house: you know
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.
X-X
The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.
x-x
Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.
- Book of Hours, II 1
A gift for flemmings if she'll have it because it's been almost nine years since I last wrote any Saiyuki fic. And I fear it is a poor offering for the lovely poem that she shared. But still ... Here you go.
.
"If this vast plain is empty ... let me fill it"
.
You stand at the window and you watch, as you wait. After all it is a force equaling both Heaven and Earth. The magical circlet upon that brow can have only bound the power for a while. The dam burst and overflows, forcing change within everything, and without. You stand and the Ancients in your blood sing to him and the age within his calls to you a primal joining of ululation. What you will do, you do not know yet.
.
You watch as Gods play at life, balmy, serene and tranquil. Sakura blossoms float in perpetuity, the scent fragrances the very air and the light that cast no shadows. You came, were sent as a vassal from your peoples. A kingly one but a vassal nonetheless, you are still young yet, and have ages to go before you come into your own.
.
You are here, for whatever the Gods of Heaven might want you to be, but you are also here to prove your worth to your great clan, that you will return one day having earned your right to place among them – as an equal. You are now, not so sure that you might even be allowed to go back to them. You are now, not so sure that you among them befit; and thus being here you have become a stranger in your own land as well as in this your adoptive home. You might curse, but it isn't in your nature to do so.
.
You do not enjoy the suffusion of light and you hold yourself aloof. Your quarters are austere, neat and prim with nothing out of place (unlike some other you know). The place that is a vast and empty plain, you now know is your heart, and you think (you thought nothing of it once) because there is an odd twist and clench beneath the scales, beneath your ribs there might be a slow beat. Might it be a herald of a storm coming? A slow, slow far off sound, so minute, but you now know – it is coming.
.
In the aftermath, you become unfeeling yet feeling the most you have ever in your long (short by your family's standard) life. The worlds, all of them – your home, Heaven, and earth – fall away from you, pulling back in the advent of a tsunami. Taking breath and sky, taking those flimsy petals even and for several heartbeats you are bereft.
.
Alone, no sea or sky and then in it comes roiling mud, blood and everything else with it that makes you feel and it is real. The pain is a solid wall that wants to burst out of your chest. And you will begin your search. You will find them again and you steer them right again (your will perhaps with help) find them in their rightful place again so you can find your place again.
.
Owari
Note:- 'X-X' is just a way of saving my line breaks in poetry because ff does not like them at all