Best Rilke Poems

The Panther
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

His weary vision's so overwhelmed by iron bars,
his exhausted eyes see only blank Oblivion.
His world is...

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This is my translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's second elegy from his Duino Elegies, which he began composing at Duino Castle in 1912. 

Second Elegy
by...

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Deep In Newly Disturbed Soil, Lies My True Love

(  “Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them” – George Eliot.)

Deep...

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“It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.” Quote by Rainer Maria Rilke
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Medusa cactus
in large blue ceramic pot
blooms...

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When the cat imitates
                  people and put on...

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 dodoitsu series (rhymed) 

Winter is taking the reins
speeding past days of autumn -
Jack Frost smears the windowpanes
forefingers and thumb.

You who have no house to...

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I shave my own hair.
I cut it and remember
My own private holocaust.

Those things the imagination plays with.
Little toys of horror, 
lingering in that skull I...

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On seeing a photograph

“Our task is to listen to the news that is always arriving out of silence”
       ...

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There was a dying breed outside
The forest.
They rose with pallor relished
And true.
Like rhythmic bramble they 
Trotted through stream,
Mares and lovers gave way.
Rivered with Rilke,
A new...

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Introspective, and charmingly coy,
her shyness enchanted my heart.
She wandered along in her own private world
quite unwilling to ration a part 

of her intricate mind full...

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Water

To obey no law, but gravities very 
own and harbor so much life; so 
much death.
Power in every ounce to sway to an 
unheard rhythm...

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Introspective, and charmingly coy,
her shyness enchanted my heart;
she wandered along in her own private world
quite unwilling to ration a part 

of her intricate mind full...

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He begins his poems with a negative tone
But there is a positive affirmation of God’s creation
Indirectly affirms the beauty of divine image
As he laments, “Disguised...

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Capri

roofless cubes, spidery with wire,
cakes of azure and enzian;
above at the Villa San Michele
Rilke smiles down at the broken beaches,
at coves of defiant waves, compacted...

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Observance
by Michael R. Burch

Here the hills are old and rolling
carefully in their old age;
on the horizon youthful mountains
bathe themselves in windblown fountains...

By dying leaves and...

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