You Mustn't Be Afraid, God
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by Rainer Maria Rilke (M recited this for me one Friday - onwardly fare)

You mustn't be afraid, God. They say /mine/
to all those things whose patience does not fail.
They're like a gale against the branches blowing
and saying "/My/ tree."

They scarcely see
how everything their hands can seize is glowing
so hot that even by its extremity
they could not hold it without getting burnt.

They say /mine/, as with peasants one will dare
to say "My friend the Prince" in conversation,
when that impressive prince is otherwhere.
They say /mine/ of their alien habitation,
while knowing nothing of the master there.
They say /mine/ and they speak of properties,
when everything upcloses which they near:
just as a mountebank might have no fear
of calling even sun and lightning his.
That's how they talk: "My life," they say, "My wife,"
"My dog," "My child," although they know that life
and wife and dog and child are all alike
remote configurings on which they strike
with outstretched hands in blind obscurity.
True, only great men know this certainly,
and long for eyes. The rest refuse to hear
that all their wretched wandering career
is with no single thing in harmony,
and that, rejected by their property,
owners disowned, they no more have the power
to own a woman than to own a flower,
which leads a life that's foreign to us all.

Ah, God, don't lose your balance. Even he
who loves you and in darkness still can see
and know your face, when like a wavering light
he feels your breath, does not possess you quite.
And if at night by some one you are guessed,
so that you're forced to come into his prayer:
    you're still the guest
    that onwardly will fare.

God, who can hold you? You are just your own,
whom no possessor's hand can be upsetting,
even as the still-maturing, sweeter-getting
vintage belongs but to itself alone.