"a spark igniting / once again the tinder of our lately / banked noetic fire."
—from "Annunciation" by Scott Cairns, as found in Idiot Psalms
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"I have a name for you; you are / the crack of light / under the door / of the city morgue."
—from "Tell Me the Way / Psalm 32" by Daniel Berrigan, as found in Uncommon Prayer: A Book of Psalms
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"And yet there is in this warm alert creature / the weight and care of a great sadness."
—from "Die Achte Elegie (The Eighth Elegy)" by Rainer Maria Rilke, as found in Duino Elegies (translated by Gary Miranda)
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For the past couple years, I keep returning to Rilke's "Eighth Elegy." On the surface, it seems so simple and the language beautiful. Yet, when I peel back the veneer the slightest bit, I am confounded and cannot quite figure out what Rilke is doing in the poem. So I keep reading it. And reflecting upon it. Meditating upon it. Letting it seep into the marrow of my bones and the recesses of my mind.
Now I have two additional poems that have been haunting me, taunting me, in the same manner. "Annunciation" by Scott Cairns concerns the scene where the angel Gabriel informs Mary that she will be the vessel that carries the Son of God; that she will be the bearer of God. Yet, as in "The Eighth Elegy" this familiar tale collapses into something I find hard to parse. Language unravels. The same happens with Daniel Berrigan's rendering of Psalm 32, in both his initial poetic lines and then his later exposition, which is also poetic—collapse into lack of comprehension.
So I will read. And reflect. And return again to these texts. Rinse and repeat.
