Mark S. Burrows

The Chance of Home

Mark S. Burrows

These poems remind us that “home” is a way of being in this world. It finds expression in the inner light that carries us through dark seasons and in what inspires us to risk life in the face of death. Many of these poems come from a long looking at the familiar and the ordinary, a patient listening for traces of a beauty that might still save us. They ponder the resilience that lies at the heart of the natural world, as well as in our desire to thrive amid the distractions that pressure us in our lives. In an over-saturated age like ours, they invite us to linger at the edges of silence, and wonder what it means that we are not made for reason alone, but “for what song can bring of solace and delight.”
“Call these meditative poems Burrows’ ‘Yes’ to the given world, his ongoing record of those instances of connectedness when we are at ‘home’ in what Pessoa called ‘the astonishing reality of things…’” —Robert Cording, poet and author of Walking with Ruskin and Only So Far
“Mark S. Burrows’ poems offer the reader both invitation and gift – when you say yes, the treasures lay themselves out like a banquet for the heart.” —Christine Valters Paintner, Online Abbess of Abbey of the Arts and author of The Wisdom of the Body: A Contemplative Journey to Wholeness for Women

Prayers of a Young Poet

Mark S. Burrows

This volume marks the first translation of these prayer-poems into English. Originally written in 1899, Rilke wrote them upon returning to Germany from his first trip to Russia. His experience of the East shaped him profoundly. He found himself entranced by Orthodox churches and monasteries, above all by the icons that seemed to him like flames glowing in dark spaces. He intended these poems as icons of sorts, gestures that could illumine a way for seekers in the darkness. As Rilke here writes, «I love the dark hours of my being, / for they deepen my senses.»