A gentle heart is wrapped with silken threads, let your eyes and mind dance in each moment to untie each one of those silken beautiful threads.
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Every angel is terrifying. And yet, alas, I invoke you, one of the soul's lethal raptors, well aware of your nature. As in the days of Tobias, when one of you, obscuring his radiance, stood at the simple threshold, appearing ordinary rather than appalling while the curious youth peered through the window. ('Rilke's Second Elegy' by Rainer Maria Rilke, loose translation by Michael R. Burch)
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Who, if I objected, would hear me among the angelic orders?
For if the least One pressed me intimately against its breast,
I would be lost in its infinite Immensity!
Because beauty, which we mortals can barely endure, is the beginning of terror;
we stand awed when it benignly declines to annihilate us.
Every Angel is terrifying!
('Rilke’s First Elegy' by Rainer Maria Rilke, loose translation by Michael R. Burch)
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I live outside your gates,
exposed to the rain, exposed to the sun;
sometimes I’ll cradle my right ear
in my right palm;
then when I speak my voice sounds strange,
alien ...
('Das Lied des Bettlers' or 'The Beggar’s Song' by Rainer Maria Rilke, loose translation by Michael R. Burch)
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How can I withhold my soul so that it doesn’t touch yours?
How can I lift mine gently to higher things, alone?
Oh, I would gladly find something lost in the dark
in that inert space that fails to resonate until you vibrate.
There everything that moves us, draws us together like a bow
enticing two taut strings to sing together with a simultaneous voice.
Whose instrument are we becoming together?
Whose, the hands that excite us?
(Rainer Maria Rilke, translation Michael R. Burch)
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His weary vision’s so overwhelmed by iron bars,
his exhausted eyes see only blank Oblivion.
His world is not our world. It has no stars.
No light. Ten thousand bars. Nothing beyond.
('Der Panther' or 'The Panther' by Rainer Maria Rilke, loose translation by Michael R. Burch)
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Come, you—the last one I acknowledge; return—
incurable pain searing this physical mesh.
As I burned in the spirit once, so now I burn
with you; meanwhile, you consume my flesh.
('Komm, Du' or 'Come, You' by Rainer Maria Rilke,
loose translation by Michael R. Burch)
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We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes’ forfeited visions. But still
the figure’s trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a lamp lit from within, while his composed will
emanates dynamism...
('Archaic Torso of Apollo' by Rainer Maria Rilke, loose translation by Michael R. Burch)
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Lord, it is time. Let the immense summer go.
Lay your long shadows over the sundials
and over the meadows, let the free winds blow.
('Herbsttag' or 'Autumn Day' by Rainer Maria Rilke, loose translation by Michael R. Burch)
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