Trojan Poetry 93: "What you cannot hold" by Rilke and "Keeping Things Whole" by Mark Strand

What you cannot hold
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Paula Modersohn-Becker

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.


Keeping Things Whole
By Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in 
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.