ANDY FISHER READS RILKE
Rainer Maria Rilke from DUINO ELEGIES , Ninth Elegy, Lines 43-52 (Trans. A. Poulin, Jr.) This is the time for what can be said. Here is its country. Speak and testify. The things we can live with are falling away more than ever, replaced by an act without symbol. An act under crusts that will easily rip as soon as the energy inside outgrows them and seeks new limits. Our hearts survive between the hammers, just as the tongue between the teeth is still able to praise. I read these lines when I was a graduate student working on the new field of ecopsychology. They gave voice to so much of what I was feeling at the time that I held them close for the rest of my student days. Decades later, now, I still recite them often. This is the time …for moral courage, for giving honest testimony about this epochal historical moment we share, all of us on the cliff edge together. The things we can live with …are, in