Being Grasped By What We Cannot Grasp Poem by gershon hepner

BEING GRASPED BY WHAT WE CANNOT GRASP


Being grasped by what we feel we cannot grasp makes us
obliged to make an effort to reach out
to share what we are grasped by and make efforts to discuss
what we've not grasped, by redirecting doubt
from darkness where it tends to make its slippery abode
to the inner light that can illum-
inate the questions that unwittingly the doubt has sowed,
so that an epiphany may bloom


This poem alludes to a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Bly

A Walk
My eyes already touch the sunny hill.
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has inner light, even from a distance-

and charges us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave...
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

The poem is also inspired by a poem I wrote on the previous day, inspired by Professor Philip Kitcher ('Brilliant Insights vs Questions Without Answers") .

3/26/12 #9686