stonepicnicking_okapi

This is the poem I used as inspiration for my BTS RM/Jimin PWP: exposed on the cliffs of the heart.

exposed on the cliffs of the heart by Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Stephen Mitchell--my favourite of Rilke's translators)

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 on the cliffs of the heart. Stoneground
under your hands. Even here, though,
something can bloom; on a silent cliff-edge
an unknowing plant blooms, singing, into the air.
But the one who knows? Ah, he began to know
and is quiet now, exposed on the cliffs of the heart.
While, with their full awareness,
many sure-footed mountain animals pass
or linger. And the great sheltered bird flies, slowly
circling, around the peak’s pure denial.—But
without a shelter, here on the cliffs of the heart . . . .

So Rilke is on my mind, not just because poetry month is coming up, but also because BTS' Jimin released the first song from his solo album and for the music video he decided to paint a passage from Rilke in the original German on his bare chest. I know! But yes! This is not that poem, but another.

The Gazelle by Rainer Maria Rilke (trans. Stephen Mitchell)

Enchanted thing: how can two chosen words
ever attain the harmony of pure rhyme
that pulses through you as your body stirs?
Out of your forehead branch and lyre climb,
.
and all your features pass in simile,through
the songs of love whose words, as light as rose-
petals, rest on the face of someone who
has put his book away and shut his eyes:
.
to see you: tensed, as it each leg were a gun
loaded with leaps, but not fired while your neck
holds your head still, listening: as when,
.
while swimming in some isolated place,
a girl hears leaves rustle, and turns to look:
the forest pool reflected in her face.

I am making my way through The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke ed. & translated by Stephen Mitchell, so expect more Rilke before the end of the month.

The Swan by Rainer Maria Rilke

This laboring through what is still undone,
as though, legs bound, we hobbled along the way,
is like the awkward walking of the swan.

And dying-to let go, no longer feel
the solid ground we stand on every day-
is like anxious letting himself fall

into waters, which receive him gently
and which, as though with reverence and joy,
draw back past him in streams on either side;
while, infinitely silent and aware,
in his full majesty and ever more
indifferent, he condescends to glide.

His most well known is, I think, this one.

The Panther by Rainer Maria Rilke

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 paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly--. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

Buddha in Glory by Rainer Maria Rilke

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet--
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.