Rainer Maria Rilke

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,

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
Otherwisethe curved breast could not ...

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
How near I was to the exquisite fruits

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 stre...

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;being born sufficed f...

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

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 and s...

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,

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 labors a...

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: bore up un...

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 your d...

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 endless space,...