Rainer Maria Rilke

All this stood upon her and was the worldand stood upon her with all its fear and graceas trees stand, growing straight up, imagelessyet wholly image, like the Ark of God,
and solemn, as if imposed upon a race.
As she endured it all:…

Put out my eyes, and I can see you still,
Slam my ears to, and I can hear you yet;
And without any feet can go to you;
And tongueless,

How can I keep my soul in me, so thatit doesn't touch your soul?
How can I raiseit high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remotelost objects, in some dark and silent placethat doesn't resonate when…

You who never arrivedin my arms,
Beloved, who were lostfrom the start,
I don't even know what songswould please you.
I have given up tryingto recognize you in the surging wave of the nextmoment.

Swing of the heart.
O firmly hung, fastened on whatinvisible branch.
Who, who gave you the push,
that you swung with me into the leaves?

She who did not come, wasn't she determinednonetheless to organize and decorate my heart?
If we had to exist to become the one we love,
what would the heart have to create?
Lovely joy left blank, perhaps you arethe center of all my…

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet—all this universe, to the furthest starsall beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.
Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into…

That some day, emerging at last from the terrifying visionI may burst into jubilant praise to assenting angels!
That of the clear-struck keys of the heart not one may failto sound because of a loose, doubtful or broken string!
That my…

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 warrantwill be for me a challenge I must meet.
If this presumptuous seems

But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverishedthe existence of the individual; the relationship betweenone human being and another has also been cramped by it,
as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of endless possibilities…

We cannot know his legendary headwith eyes like ripening fruit.
And yet his torsois still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power.

You don't survive in mebecause of memories;
nor are you mine becauseof a lovely longing's strength.
What does make you presentis the ardent detourthat a slow tendernesstraces in my blood.
I do not needto see you appear;

That's my window.
This
So gently did I
From sleep—was still floating in it.

You, you only, exist.
We pass away, till at last,
our passing is so immensethat you arise: beautiful moment,
in all your suddenness

Everything is farand long gone by.
I think that the starglittering above mehas been dead for a million years.
I think there were tearsin the car I heard passand something terrible was said.
A clock has stopped striking in the…

Do you remember still the falling starsthat like swift horses through the heavens racedand suddenly leaped across the hurdlesof our wishes—do you recall?
And wedid make so many!
For there were countless numbersof stars: each time we…

It is life in slow motion,
it's the heart in reverse,
it's a hope-and-a-half:
too much and too little at once.

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:

And you wait, keep waiting for that one thingwhich would infinitely enrich your life:
the powerful, uniquely uncommon,
the awakening of dormant stones,
depths that would reveal you to yourself.

See how in their veins all becomes spirit;
into each other they mature and grow.
Like axles, their forms tremblingly orbit,
round which it whirls, bewitching and aglow.

Extinguish Thou my eyes:
I still can see Thee,
deprive my ears of sound:
I still can hear Thee

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenlypressed me against his heart,
I would perishin the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of…

Who says that all must vanish?
Who knows, perhaps the flightof the bird you wound remains,
and perhaps flowers survivecaresses in us, in their ground.
It isn't the gesture that lasts

O you tender ones, walk now and theninto 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, you who are whole