All Poems

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Palm

© Rainer Maria Rilke

Interior of the hand. Sole that has come to walk
only on feelings. That faces upward
and in its mirror
receives heavenly roads, which travel

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 tears can fill me.

What Birds Plunge Through Is Not The Intimate Space

© Rainer Maria Rilke

What birds plunge through is not the intimate space,
in which you see all Forms intensified.
(In the Open, denied, you would lose yourself,
would disappear into that vastness.)

The Song Of The Beggar

© Rainer Maria Rilke

I am always going from door to door,
whether in rain or heat,
and sometimes I will lay my right ear in
the palm of my right hand.
And as I speak my voice seems strange as if
it were alien to me,

Lament (O how all things are far removed)

© Rainer Maria Rilke

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.

What Fields Are As Fragrant As Your Hands?

© Rainer Maria Rilke

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 all in idleness.

Night (O you whose countenance)

© Rainer Maria Rilke

Night. O you whose countenance, dissolved
in deepness, hovers above my face.
You who are the heaviest counterweight
to my astounding contemplation.

The Song Of The Widow

© Rainer Maria Rilke

That was not his fault nor mine
since both of us had nothing but patience;
but death has none.
I saw him coming (how rotten he looked),
and I watched him as he took and took:
and nothing was mine.

Duino Elegies: The Tenth Elegy

© Rainer Maria Rilke

Yet the dead youth must go on alone.
In silence the elder Lament brings him
as far as the gorge where it shimmers in the moonlight:
The Foutainhead of Joy. With reverance she names it,
saying: "In the world of mankind it is a life-bearing stream."

The Last Evening

© Rainer Maria Rilke

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

For Hans Carossa

© Rainer Maria Rilke

Losing too is still ours; and even forgetting
still has a shape in the kindgdom of transformation.
When something's let go of, it circles; and though we are
rarely the center
of the circle, it draws around us its unbroken, marvelous
curve.

The Poet

© Rainer Maria Rilke

O hour of my muse: why do you leave me,
Wounding me by the wingbeats of your flight?
Alone: what shall I use my mouth to utter?

Solemn Hour

© Rainer Maria Rilke

Whoever now weeps somewhere in the world,
weeps without reason in the world,
weeps over me.

from The Tenth Elegy

© 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.

The Voices

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,

Along The Sun-Drenched Roadside

Thus, if you came, I could be satisfied
to let my hand rest lightly, for a moment,
lightly, upon your shoulder or your breast.

The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: I

Breathing: you invisible poem! Complete
interchange of our own
essence with world-space. You counterweight
in which I rythmically happen.

Duino Elegies: The Fourth Elegy

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

Eve

Look how she stands, high on the steep facade
of the cathedral, near the window-rose,
simply, holding in her hand the apple,
judged for all time as the guiltless-guilty

Song

You, whom I do not tell that all night long
I lie weeping,
whose very being makes me feel wanting
like a cradle.