#19

Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside is own house,
stays there, inside the dishes and the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.

from A Book For the Hours of Prayer
Rainer Maria Rilke
Robert Bly, trans.
Harper & Row, 1981