stonepicnicking_okapi (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stonepicnicking_okapi) wrote2023-04-20 11:37 am
stonepicnicking_okapi) wrote2023-04-20 11:37 am
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Poet's Corner: Rilke
It wouldn't be April without Rilke either. Here's one of his most famous passages.
from The Sonnets to Orpheus Book II, No. 29 by Rainer Maria Rilke [trans. by Stephen Mitchell]
Silent friend of many distances, feel
how your breath enlarges all of space.
Let your presence ring out like a bell
into the night. What feeds upon your face
grows mighty from the nourishment thus offered.
Move through transformation, out and in.
What is the deepest loss that you have suffered?
If drinking is bitter, change yourself to wine.
In this immeasurable darkness, be the power
that rounds your sense in their magic ring,
the sense of their mysterious encounter.
And if the earthly no longer knows your name,
whisper to the silent earth: I’m flowing.
To the flashing water say: I am.
from The Sonnets to Orpheus Book II, No. 29 by Rainer Maria Rilke [trans. by Stephen Mitchell]
Silent friend of many distances, feel
how your breath enlarges all of space.
Let your presence ring out like a bell
into the night. What feeds upon your face
grows mighty from the nourishment thus offered.
Move through transformation, out and in.
What is the deepest loss that you have suffered?
If drinking is bitter, change yourself to wine.
In this immeasurable darkness, be the power
that rounds your sense in their magic ring,
the sense of their mysterious encounter.
And if the earthly no longer knows your name,
whisper to the silent earth: I’m flowing.
To the flashing water say: I am.
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