If the gods bring to you
a strange and frightening creature,
accept the gift
as if it were one you had chosen.
Say the accustomed prayers,
oil the hooves well,
caress the small ears with praise.
Have the new halter of woven silver
embedded with jewels.
Spare no expense, pay what is asked,
when a gift arrives from the sea.
Treat it as you yourself
would be treated, brought speechless and naked
into the court of a king.
And when the request finally comes,
do not hesitate even an instant –
stroke the white throat,
the heavy, trembling dewlaps
you’d come to believe were yours,
and plunge in the knife.
Not once
did you enter the pasture
without pause,
without yourself trembling,
that you came to love it,that was the gift.
Let the envious gods take back what they can.
White bulls come in many forms. Often, we hope to pass them by. Even so, a bull – no ordinary bull, but a white one, pure, unsullied, fresh with the dew of heaven – is likely, at one time or another, to step forward, shining, into your life or mine. The bull is the epitome of strength, power, and libido. It offers us drive, direction, and purpose; a burst of new life.
It is also dangerous and frightening; frightening because you have probably never encountered such a wild beast before. Perhaps your life was coasting along swimmingly, fulfilling enough if fairly predictable. And then out of nowhere, in this very moment, something storms into your world that you cannot fail to notice; something strange, fascinating, overwhelming, even. And your comfortable, protecting circle is suddenly broken. Everything is thrown out of kilter, the center does not hold, the dishes are flying about the room.
This, precisely this, Jane Hirshfield suggests in this magnificent poem, is a gift from the gods. A gift, and not the curse we may take it to be. Our life asks us to accept it with as much grace as we are able – as if it were the very thing we would have chosen for ourselves. This kind of wildness storming into our living room could take the form of almost anything – a sudden illness, or loss of a loved one, perhaps; a spiritual awakening or crisis, a sudden reconfiguring of your work, and of course, the storm of love. Whatever breaks open the soul, pierces the lull of the daily round, is always a dangerous opportunity.
Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
Where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
As the curve of the body as it turns away.
What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
And is easily shattered.
Pour yourself like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
Finishes often at the start, and with ending, begins.
Every happiness is the child of separation
It did not think it could survive. And Daphne,
Becoming a laurel,
Dares you to become the wind.
So Rilke is urging us to want the change that is happening, to embrace it, whatever it is. If we are in the middle of a divorce, let it be that; if we have lost our job, let it be that, and if we are dying, may it be so. Of course it’s not easy. Nobody willingly allows themselves to be dismembered, torn apart, crushed like a grape between fingers. The ego, our idea of who we think we are, will never assent to self sacrifice. The impulse must come from something else in us, another organ of awareness, you might say, that knows somehow that, however much it hurts, however much we may be on the rack – a sacrificial lamb, it may seem to us – that what is happening is true, necessary, inevitable, and ultimately, therefore, good.
Easy enough to say, but it didn’t quite feel like that for me when I finally parted from my wife, Maria, at the beginning of 2006, eight years after first meeting her. The same Maria I met in near mythic circumstances, described in my earlier books, in what felt like a visitation from destiny. She was a muse for me, and her beauty and thoughtful calm inspired me til the end. Yet there were deep incompatibilities too, that for a while we both let the charisma, the magic of our togetherness gloss over. But increasingly, over the space of a few years, it became evident that our lives had very different trajectories and priorities.
