The Core Of The Rose

Rose, you throning one, to them of ancient times

You were a chalice with a simple rim.

But for us you are the full. The countless flower,

The inexhaustible object.

In your richness you seem like raiment on raiment

About the body of nothing but light;

But your single leaf is at once the shunning

And the denial of all attire.

For centuries your fragrance has been calling

In sweetest names across to us;

Suddenly it lies in the air like fame.

Even so, we don’t know what to call it, we guess. . .

And memory goes over to it

That we have asked from hours we could call.

Rilke is considered one of the 20th century’s most prolific poets. His work is read around the globe, and in the German speaking world, Rilke has no peers. His poem about the rose is from his 1923 work, Sonnets to Orpheus. Rilke treats all consciousness with respect and admiration and captures the personality of each aspect of nature with a gentle snare. The rose like our physical presence is constantly changing. Our similarities are fruitfully divine. But, our intentions create expressions that tend to manifest a plethora of insidious experiences to experience. Our essence never violates us; it waters us from the well of consciousness.

The rose has no beliefs to entangle it in its thorns. It lives in harmony with its diversity, and uses color to communicate its inexhaustible essence. It asks no questions, so the inconsistent and illogical atoms in the rose create meaningful probabilities that define its attitude toward time. For centuries the rose has expressed its fragrant energy in realities filled with distorted perceptions. Yet it continues to create and attract sweetness from the widening awareness of its own consciousness. The rose has its own type of perception, and its conscious memory explodes in the petals.

Rilke explains the Core of the Rose this way:

What is to this inner
An outer? On what ache
Do they lay such linen?
And what heavens are mirrored within it,
In the sheltered lake
Of these open roses
Carefree ones; understand
How they loosely lie in the looseness
As if never a hand, trembling might spill them.
They all but fail in dwelling
Firm in themselves, and many arose
Let itself be overfilled; and welling
Over with inner space, these stream
Into days that, swelling
More and more wealth enclose,
Till all of summer grows
Into a room, a room in a dream.