Short Rilke Poems

chocolate silk
chewy milk booze
and Rilke romance...

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Ranier Maria Rilke
a poet&writer was he
Many a letter he also wrote
useful if you require a quote...

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poems mean so many things;
rhythm, rhyme and sound.

poems fill me through and through
while no soul is around.

I and Langston; Rilke too. even Rita Dove
poems hold me closely; poems are my love.

poems fill me with much wit
yes-
I'm so full of it....

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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 day came to pass.
The ferrets of the un-furrowed brow
Gave brilliance to our every breathe....

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( Das Land ist licht und dunkel ist die Laube - Rainer Maria Rilke)

The land is light but dark the arbor
Your face broken with hair, hands
Curled in your lap,you sleep under greenery

The morning has stopped,do not fear
That I will ever leave your shadow,let me
While in the coolness, here and eternal....

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The Master of Nuances
 
Supreme literary intensity
Rainer Maria Rilke—
Inspired as Orpheus sings
Predilection for Die Dinge
A mastery of true nuances
A thirst for poetic symbols
He sings now with Orpheus
And the angels in Heaven.

Gary Bateman, Copyright © All Rights Reserved
December 5, 2016 (Verse)...

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After you left I fell asleep,
Lost in a web of warm cotton and
Sudden space, stretching in your warmth.
Your dreamcatcher turns in the morning light,
A trace of Eau-de-Cologne hangs in the air.
I find a poem by Rilke on your pillow,
An open book, almost lost by reading;
Ich finde Dich in allen diesen Dingen.
But then I lose myself again, outside
The traffic has stolen you like a thief....

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‘Here among the vanishing ones, in the realm of decline’
body parts of ghosts remain to haunt each other.
Morning is taken with just a slice of lemon
the tears of the lost milk the cup.
The older the bones get the more ghosts are crowded
into an abandoned house.
We who are left make supper early,
go to the bird table at dusk,
feed the failing sun, remember to honor
the past as if it were only yesterday....

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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 of poems
and novels abstruse and arcane, 
they would challenge a D.Phil from Oxford
their mangled motifs to explain. 

Then I discovered her Achilles heel,
the way to steal one little kiss;
it was Rilke, he was the key to her soul,
'rigor mortis' to absolute bliss!...

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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 sea

Pompeii

a chessboard of honest stones
open to a sky of hushed shouts;
we huddle in a boned frame
of another life, a stopped day

Napoli

warm and secret, olive-eyed
an infinite beauty makes a new face
as we gaze ape-like from our bus;
an act of moment...

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Introspective, delightfully 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 of poems
and novels so frightfully arcane 
they would challenge a D.Phil from Oxon.
their mangled motifs to explain.                  

Then I discovered her Achilles heel,
the way to steal one little kiss;
it was Rilke, he was the key to her soul,
rigor mortis to absolute bliss!...

Read More

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 of poems
and novels so frightfully arcane 
they would challenge a D.Phil from Oxon.
their mangled motifs to explain.                  

Then I discovered her Achilles heel,
the way to steal one little kiss;
it was Rilke, he was the key to her soul,
rigor mortis to absolute bliss!...

Read More

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 of poems
and novels so frightfully arcane 
they would challenge a D.Phil from Oxon.
their mangled motifs to explain.                  

Then I discovered her Achilles heel,
the way to steal one little kiss;
it was Rilke, he was the key to her soul,
disappointment to absolute bliss!...

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so simple a star,
for oh so long
it glitters, in my eyes —
still alive.

living things have walked this path
in love, excited, lonely and ragged.

do stars fall like rain or snow?
do they stop the cuckoo clock?

the sky — like the sea manifest,
a prayer to touch.
pondering the last star —
is it the same as the first?
is it close to my heart
or far?

is it perhaps Rilke’s white city?*

perhaps...perhaps

12/17/2018

*Lament by Rainer Maria Rilke...

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