Hand carved slate, 130 x 920 x 20mm

The text of this inscription, which roughly translates as ‘I would like to step out from my heart under the great sky’ is an extract from Rainer Maria Rilke's poem Klage (‘Lament’), written in 1900.

The poem hints at distant, unattainable, lost things (it starts with the words ‘How far away everything is’), but perhaps also hope to be found in the immensity of the natural world. I often find it more fruitful in inscriptions like this to use texts which are not too self-contained, and suggest things beyond the words themselves and beyond the bounds of the stone. This idea also informs the lettering design and layout.