Darkness
You darkness from which I come,
I love you more than all the fires
that fence out the world,
for the fire makes a circle
for everyone
so that no one sees you anymore.
But darkness holds it all:
the shape and the flame,
the animal and myself,
how it holds them,
all powers, all sight —
and it is possible: its great strength
is breaking into my body.
I have faith in the night.
-Rainer Maria Rilke, Translation by David Whyte
We are taught to fear darkness, to seek only the light. But Rilke knew something else: darkness is not absence—it's the holding place for everything. The light creates boundaries, separates, makes us visible only in fragments. Darkness contains it all: shadow and illumination, the known and unknown, what we are and what we're becoming. To have faith in the night is to trust what cannot yet be seen.
