This week’s poem is called “Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower” by Rainer Maria Rilke, and offers a different perspective to the other poems we’ve explored so far. This poem invites us to flip the way we approach positive thinking, so instead of chasing the light, we let the darkness in.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower

Quiet friend who has come so far,

feel how your breathing makes more space around you.

Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.

Move back and forth into the change.

What is it like, such intensity of pain?

If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,

be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,

the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,

say to the silent earth: I flow.

To the rushing water, speak: I am.

One line in particular has found its way in to my classes this week: “feel how your breathing makes more space around you”. Noticing the breath invites a deeper breath. As we inhale, the diaphragm contracts, the chest expands, we physically create more space in the body. On the exhale, the muscles relax, the body deflates and there is a sense of momentary release.

Awareness of our breathing also reminds us that the breath is a constant companion, even through uncertainty, anxiety or times of darkness. It asks nothing of us, it simply serves as an anchor to come back to, a way to reconnect to the present moment and give the mind some space.

Our default is to rid ourselves of pain, but Rilke is asking us to not only lean in, but to make it loud and visible. Yoga too does not ask you to leave your pain at the door, but invites it on to the mat. Instead of treating discomfort as something to escape, it is refrained as something to attend to. In this way, pain is neither hidden nor dramatised, but transformed through attention into something that resonates with meaning rather than mere suffering.

The final line, “To the rushing water, speak: I am”, encourages the interruption of the flow of thoughts. “I am” is an assertive phrase often used in affirmations to influence the subconscious. I offered these three affirmations to sit with during class:

I am enough.

I have enough.

I do enough.