Pushing Through

by Rainer Maria Rilke

It’s possible I am pushing through solid rock
in flintlike layers, as the ore lies, alone;
I am such a long way in I see no way through,
and no space: everything is close to my face,
and everything close to my face is stone.

I don’t have much knowledge yet in grief
so this massive darkness makes me small.
You be the master: make yourself fierce, break in:
then your great transforming will happen to me,
and my great grief cry will happen to you.  

Rilke, Rainer Maria. “Pushing Through” in Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. and ed. Robert Bly (New York: Harper and Row, 1981) 55.