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Poems that Restored My Soul
In loving memory of
Cecil E. Hoffman Jr.
4/16/32-12/27/22
CECIL READING IT'S POSSIBLE
It's Possible
It’s possible I am pushing through solid rock
in flintlike layers, as the ore lies, alone;
I am such a long way in I see no way through,
and no space: everything is close to my face,
and everything close to my face is stone.
I don’t have much knowledge yet in grief
so this massive darkness makes me small.
You be the master: make yourself fierce, break in:
then your great transforming will happen to me,
and my great grief cry will happen to you.
--Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke, “It's Possible” in Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. and ed. Robert Bly (New York: Harper and Row, 1981) 55
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