“Spring has returned. The earth resembles
a child who has memorized
many poems … For all the trouble
of her long learning she wins the prize.
Her teacher was strict. We loved the white
in the old man’s beard and shaggy eyebrows.
Now, whatever we ask about
the blue and the green … she knows, she knows!
Earth, overjoyed to be on holiday,
Play with the children. We long to catch up,
jubilant Earth. The happiest wins.
What her teacher taught her, the numberless Things,
and what lies hidden in the stem and in the deep
difficult root, she sings, she sings!”—Rainer Maria Rilke
This poem from Rilke’s The Sonnets to Orpheus was written in the wake of World War I. The madness, confusion, grief and sadness around him became almost too much to bear. Upon leaving city life for a visit to Spain, he connected with the wonders of nature again, and eventually reconnected to the spirit alive within.
“Spring has returned” and many other poems in this volume are so vivid—a celebration of the life that surrounds even now during a time of distancing, isolation, fear and uncertainty. This particular poem was written and completed almost instantly in a sudden burst of divine inspiration Rilke would later describe as a “hurricane of spirit.”
Many people of wisdom have reassured us that we cannot know light without darkness. They have instructed us to hold space for all the seemingly opposing forces that ultimately enrich and educate us throughout our lives.
As we appreciate the fullness of spring around us, may we cultivate the spring within us. How encouraging it is to know that just beyond the seeming solidity of our present predicament we might suddenly find ourselves rapt and transformed by the astonishing beauty, vitality and grace of Spirit.
—Jessica Lien, Prairiewoods development coordinator