ceaseless message

Voices.Voices. Listen, my heart, as only
saints have listened: until the gigantic call lifted them
off the ground; yet they kept on, impossibly,
kneeling and didn't notice at all:
so complete was their listening. Not that you could endure
God's voice - far from it. But listen to the voice of the wind
and the ceaseless message that forms itself out of silence. (Rilke)

1. Wind, Voice and Spirit have always been linked. A whole literary tradition senses in the wind’s breath the stir of Creation or else the restless whisper of the dead. Wind seems to signal life minus existence, either in anticipation or arrears. Again, this may help account for the two principle forms of the Wind-Spirit-Voice: as melancholy lament, exiled and ‘unhoused’ (the note of grief and posthumous exile); or as the wordless Word that quickens matter into life, or glosses the mere letter with meaning.

2. re Rilke, above: the 'power of the voice' refers not to any specific & pronounced message, but the breach made in silence. The voice, prior to saying anything, announces this breach – it begins, strange and premonitory.