You

“I’m the one who’s been asking you–

it hurts to ask– Who are you?

I am orphaned

each time the sun goes down.

I can feel cast out from everything

and even churches look like prisons.

—

That’s when I want you–

you knower of my emptiness,

you unspeaking partner to my sorrow–

that’s when I need you, God, like food.”

-Rainer Maria Rilke (in Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God) translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

Advertisement