Rainer Maria Rilke
October 1924*
Palm of the hand. Sole that has ceased to walk
on anything but feeling. That faces up
and in the mirror
receives heavenly streets, in themselves
mutable.
That has learnt to walk on water
when it fetches water,
that walks over wells,
transmuter of every way.
That appears in other hands,
turning its own kind
into a landscape:
wanders, arrives in them,
with arrival fills them.
Interior studies of a hand, inspired by readings of Rainer Maria Rilke.
Reference: Rilke, RM 1981, ‘Palm of the Hand’, in M Hamburger (ed.), Poems 1912-1926, Black Swan Books, Redding Ridge, Connecticut, p. 95.
site praxis 