Rainer Maria Rilke

Ah, but the City of Pain: how strange its streets are: The false silence of sound drowning sound, And there proud, brazen, effluence from the mold of emptiness The gilded hubbub, the bursting monument.

We cannot know his legendary head With eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso Is still suffused with brilliance from inside, Like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low, Gleams

Harshness vanished. A sudden softness Has replaced the meadows’ wintry grey. Little rivulets of water changed Their singing accents. Tendernesses, Hesitantly, reach toward the earth From space, and country lanes are showing These unexpected

A tree ascended there. Oh pure transendence! Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear! And all things hushed. Yet even in that silence A new beginning, beckoning, change appeared. Creatures of stillness

Swing of the heart. O firmly hung, fastened on what Invisible branch. Who, who gave you the push, That you swung with me into the leaves? How near I was to the exquisite fruits.

O trees of life, oh, what when winter comes? We are not of one mind. Are not like birds In unison migrating. And overtaken, Overdue, we thrust ourselves into the wind And fall to

We lack all knowledge of this parting. Death Does not deal with us. We have no reason To show death admiration, love or hate; His mask of feigned tragic lament gives us A false

You who are close to my heart always, I welcome you, ancient coffins of stone, Which the cheerful water of Roman days Still flows through, like a wandering song. Or those other ones that

In some summers there is so much fruit, The peasants decide not to reap any more. Not having reaped you, oh my days, My nights, have I let the slow flames Of your lovely

In the beginning life was good to me; It held me warm and gave me courage. That this is granted all while in their youth, How could I then have known of this. I

I am like a flag in the center of open space. I sense ahead the wind which is coming, and must live It through. While the things of the world still do not move:

Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr groЯ. Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren, Und auf den Fluren laЯ die Winde los. Befiehl den letzten Früchten voll zu sein; Gieb innen noch zwei

Music: breathing of statues. Perhaps: Silence of paintings. You language where all language Ends. You time Standing vertically on the motion of mortal hearts. Feelings for whom? O you the transformation Of feelings into

I am no one and never will be anyone, For I am far too small to claim to be; Not even later. Mothers and Fathers, Take pity on me. I fear it will not

My whole life is mine, but whoever says so Will deprive me, for it is infinite. The ripple of water, the shade of the sky Are mine; it is still the same, my life.

Come thou, thou last one, whom I recognize, Unbearable pain throughout this body’s fabric: As I in my spirit burned, see, I now burn in thee: The wood that long resisted the advancing flames

The rich and fortunate do well to keep silent, For no one cares to know who and what they are. But those in need must reveal themselves, Must say: I am blind, Or: I’m

High above he stands, beside the many Saintly figures fronting the cathedral’s Gothic tympanum, close by the window Called the rose, and looks astonished at his Own deification which placed him there. Erect and

Breathing: you invisible poem! Complete Interchange of our own Essence with world-space. You counterweight In which I rythmically happen. Single wave-motion whose Gradual sea I am: You, most inclusive of all our possible seas-

That is my window. Just now I have so softly wakened. I thought that I would float. How far does my life reach, And where does the night begin I could think that everything

Exposed on the cliffs of the heart. Look, how tiny down there, Look: the last village of words and, higher, (but how tiny) still one last Farmhouse of feeling. Can you see it? Exposed

Only mouths are we. Who sings the distant heart Which safely exists in the center of all things? His giant heartbeat is diverted in us Into little pulses. And his giant grief Is, like

Other vessels hold wine, other vessels hold oil Inside the hollowed-out vault circumscribed by their clay. I, as smaller measure, and as the slimmest of all, Humbly hollow myself so that just a few

What fields are as fragrant as your hands? You feel how external fragrance stands Upon your stronger resistance. Stars stand in images above. Give me your mouth to soften, love; Ah, your hair is

This laboring through what is still undone, As though, legs bound, we hobbled along the way, Is like the akward walking of the swan. And dying-to let go, no longer feel The solid ground

She sat just like the others at the table. But on second glance, she seemed to hold her cup A little differently as she picked it up. She smiled once. It was almost painful.

They are assembled, astonished and disturbed Round him, who like a sage resolved his fate, And now leaves those to whom he most belonged, Leaving and passing by them like a stranger. The loneliness

Look how the same possibilities Unfold in their opposite demeanors, As though one saw different ages Passing through two identical rooms. Each thinks that she props up the other, While resting wearily on her

Call to me to the one among your moments That stands against you, ineluctably: Intimate as a dog’s imploring glance But, again, forever, turned away When you think you’ve captured it at last. What

Suddenly, from all the green around you, Something-you don’t know what-has disappeared; You feel it creeping closer to the window, In total silence. From the nearby wood You hear the urgent whistling of a

My eyes already touch the sunny hill. Going far ahead of the road I have begun. So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp; It has inner light, even from a distance- And

O you tender ones, walk now and then Into the breath that blows coldly past, Upon your cheeks let it tremble and part; Behind you it will tremble together again. O you blessed ones,

Four Translations Lord: it is time. The summer was immense. Lay your shadow on the sundials And let loose the wind in the fields. Bid the last fruits to be full; Give them another

Strange violin, why do you follow me? In how many foreign cities did you Speak of your lonely nights and those of mine. Are you being played by hundreds? Or by one? Do in

How can I keep my soul in me, so that It doesn’t touch your soul? How can I raise It high enough, past you, to other things? I would like to shelter it, among

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat Held for it by a row of ancient trees; You watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight, One journeying to heaven, one that falls;

What I have already learned as a lover, I see you, beloved, learning angrily; Then for you it distantly departed, Now your destiny stands in all the stars. Over your breasts we will together

Some day, if I should ever lose you, Will you be able then to go to sleep Without me softly whispering above you Like night air stirring in the linden tree? Without my waking

How my body blooms from every vein More fragrantly, since you appeard to me; Look, I walk slimmer now and straighter, And all you do is wait-:who are you then? Look: I feel how

His vision, from the constantly passing bars, Has grown so weary that it cannot hold Anything else. It seems to him there are A thousand bars and behind the bars, no world. As he

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were Behind you, like the winter that has just gone by. For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter That only by wintering

(Capri, Piccola Marina) Timeless sea breezes, Sea-wind of the night: You come for no one; If someone should wake, He must be prepared How to survive you. Timeless sea breezes, That for aeons have

Being apart and lonely is like rain. It climbs toward evening from the ocean plains; From flat places, rolling and remote, it climbs To heaven, which is its old abode. And only when leaving

I have great faith in all things not yet spoken. I want my deepest pious feelings freed. What no one yet has dared to risk and warrant Will be for me a challenge I

The saintly hermit, midway through his prayers Stopped suddenly, and raised his eyes to witness The unbelievable: for there before him stood The legendary creature, startling white, that Had approached, soundlessly, pleading with his

O how all things are far removed And long have passed away. I do believe the star, Whose light my face reflects, Is dead and has been so For many thousand years. I had

He felt the entrance’s green darkness Wrapped cooly round him like a silken cloak That he was still accepting and arranging; When at the opposite transparent end, far off, Through green sunlight, as through

In the years when we were All children, this inclining To be alone so much was gentle; Others’ time passed fighting, And one had one’s faction, One’s near, one’s far-off place, A path, an

The deep parts of my life pour onward, As if the river shores were opening out. It seems that things are more like me now, That I can see farther into paintings. I feel

Ignorant before the heavens of my life, I stand and gaze in wonder. Oh the vastness Of the stars. Their rising and descent. How still. As if I didn’t exist. Do I have any

And night and distant rumbling; now the army’s Carrier-train was moving out, to war. He looked up from the harpsichord, and as He went on playing, he looked across at her Almost as one

The steadfastness of generations of nobility Shows in the curving lines that form the eyebrows. And the blue eyes still show traces of childhood fears And of humility here and there, not of a