Through the Empty Branches the Sky Remains

There are still many people who haven’t yet recovered from Aug. 10th’s derecho. It was the first storm of its kind for many in Iowa and has been designated as the nation’s most destructive natural disaster in 2020.

We’ve endured many storms, and not all of them physical. The poem “Onto a Vast Plain” by Rainer Maria Rilke shows an intimate view of that threshold between the physical and mental devastation and spiritual becoming. The question to be answered here is not “How do you survive disaster?” but rather, “What is it that cannot be destroyed?”

Onto a Vast Plain
by Rainer Maria Rilke

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.

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.

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.

The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.

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.

—Jessica Lien, Prairiewoods development coordinator