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The pains of reality justify the
Deep seated sorrow of man.

The vulture encircles me
Events surrounded by mystery
Enveloped in insanity
The human race is
Captivated by mystery
Doomed to repeat history

Collusion to bestow unmitigated
Sorrow upon my being

Simply put, I am
Damaged goods

Speak softly now
And choose your next thoughts
Carefully,
For the devil has called
My soul to dance

Reckless, unmitigated
Abandonment
Of mind, body, and soul
Fruitless searches
Forever numb
Longing to feel whole

Deep beneath the rolling waves
Lies serenity
Amongst sunken slaves
Deep inside my brain
The labyrinth of my mind
Memories that
I've left behind
Gone with the breeze
Above arid land
Somewhere lost in the desert
Where only shamans understand
Somewhere locked in the innocence
Of childhood frailty
Misplaced in the universe
Perpetuating reality
Walking alongside
All the gods of the ages
Bounding across time
In history's pages
Vacated with the morals
Of man
Lost in the seams of
Our lives
In the absence of the infinite
Shared hallucinogenic cries
Gone with the limbs of
The serpent
Ignored individuality dies
The reflection of man tainted,
For it is where the devil hides
Looming in the shadows
Of irresistible allure
No acquittal of our sins
A race ****** to remain
Impure
Violence surrounding our
Unequivocal, dastardly instincts
Perched in the forefront of our
Perceived selves
Selfish, devilish
Acts of kindness
The misfortune of the fortunate
Given all the amenities
Of a king's meal
Without the sensation of
Taste
Washed away with our
Dreams of betterment
Laying upon the chests
Of mythological beasts
Souls left rotting
Souring with ferment

Supreme consciousness
Arouses the senses
Invent my future with the
Myths of the past

You're stuck in a state of
Imaginary grace
Dream myself into
New bounds of transparency

Cryptic writings
Things left unsaid
Unsure of the real
Or the surreal
Life's slipping away
Once again
Paper in hand
Palms begin to sweat
Indulging into reality
Memories
I long to forget

It seems forever
Since I've been home
Trying to balance
This chemical imbalance
But always, I'm left here
Alone
Believing my dreams real
Realizing my world's surreal
Living with uncertainty
Imagining reality

Where do I go
To hide the pain?
Dual existence?
Acute psychosis?
Trapped inside my own
Brain
There's a place in my mind
I like to hide
Where all of my secrets
I do confide
There's a place I go
To bury the pain
A papered existence
Conducive synopsis,
Abstained

I begin to sweat
My heart screaming
From my chest
Let the feeling pass
Delve into the kingdom
Inability to
Repress
Take me away
To that far off place
Abscond into surreality
Amongst things I dare not
Confess

Drinking in divinity
Affixed on mortality
Will I die in this place?
Unable to resurface
Back in reality

Stuck running in circles
On a surface-less plane
Can't escape the shadows
Can't remove the pain
Simple design
Made up of
Over thought complexity
A universe separated
Removed from the modern mind
Inexorably

Amputation of
The mutation
That is the
Human race
Segregation of this
Charred realm
From other wordly
Space
We live
We die
And death begins it
Reinvent our minds
Ignite our passions

Drowning in a gene pool
Of degenerates
Souls thrashing
Wildly, forlorn
Plunged into unmitigated
Evil
Of a race that destroys
The unborn

Lachrymose gaze
Upon the living dead
A thin film of separation
Through which lies
Are fed
Understanding the weakness
Into which we are
******
For shed blood
Forces cries
Ripping from mother's eyes
Witnessing her own demise
As a piece of her
Slowly dies
For father's impenitent
Fantasies once dreamed
Torn away from aching
Fingers
Left ravaged,
Impotent

Gazing at you
Under the cloak of
Intrigue
Watching you struggle
In the tangled lies
You weave

Commanding the head
Of the serpent
Lilith forcing man's
Non-repent
Imposed upon our being
Righteous punishments
Such ramifications
Deemed astringent

Incomprehensible
Allure
Masochists of
Everything pure

Watch the world die
From afar
Irrevocable despair
Promising allegiance
To a life I cannot
Bear

Killing myself with
Indecision
On the perimeter
Of sanity
In the psychotropic prison
And psychotic affliction

Here it comes again
The voices, getting louder
It doesn't feel good anymore
How do I escape
Escaping?
Where do I go when my sanctum
Has been compromised?
Unable to quiet
The insurgents afoot
Incurable, incalculable
Indecision
Lost, finding my way home
Left in between existence
Alongside myself
Alone

The cold, inhuman ability
To sacrifice one's own mind
Hanging onto the coat tails
Of free thought
Journey we now,
Into the nightmare
Ignoring loss of
Comprehension
Vacated laws of
Apprehension
Arming latent illness
Plotting revenge
Beneath the surface

Here it comes again
I hear it getting louder
It doesn't feel good anymore
Who will save the lifeguard
When he's about to drown?

Can you see me?
Can you hear my cry out?
He looks to find
There's no one around

Searching indefinitely
For myself
Lost in another
Under the guise of
Someone else
Why does it matter?
Seemingly insignificant
In a moment of clarity
Just breathe for a moment
Shoved back in reality
"Am I dreaming," he asked
His reflection replied
The answer profound
Unknowingly died

I sold my soul to get here
On the periphery of realization
Stuck on the perimeter of reality
Reentry revoked
Forced to sit idly
As my life passes
Before my eyes

This is my letter
Unable to deliver
This is my life
Unable to decipher
This is my nightmare
That I've never dreamed before

Trapped in the prison
I've constructed on my own
Locked myself in four walls
Of uncertainty
Built in the center of being
Unnoticed by the proprietor
Frailty prevalent
Implosion of the mind
Leading to the ******* of
The insanity
I've come to find

Death looms at the end
Of the candlestick
Walk hand in hand
With me
Fellow traveler of
Uncharted paths
My fellow affliction
With the unknown
Unable to save myself
From the pain I know
Awaits me

Here it comes again
Inescapable, maniacal laughter
It doesn't feel good anymore
And all I ever wanted
Was your guiding hand
Complacent in lies
Forcing deafening cries,
For there will be
No reprise
As my soul flutters
And dies

Death for sale
Ten will take you away
Consumed by the thought of it
No more worry
No more being suppressed
This other kingdom
Unknowingly repressed
Delve deeper into the nightmare
We lie together
Naked
Unashamed
Open to the probing
Fingertips
Of the world
Unable to speak
Sleep paralysis,
Yet this is no dream
Wide eyed
Searching
Unable to scream

Incommunicable desires
No longer latent
Unsuppressed is the disease
Of your discontent
Insufferable, forcible pain
Towards the ones loved most
Catatonic, embryonic
Feeble mind
Please save me from myself

Forgive me, father
For I know not what I do
Forgive me, mother
For I do not blame you

Plastic state of being
Suspended in the viscous
Coagulant of stolen thought
And free will
Drowning in my
Own enjoyment
Of self suffering

How will you remember me?
A trembling voice
To read my eulogy?

Forget the things I should have said
This demoness I've brought to bed
Speaking in riddles
Bewilderment of the senses
Deeper appreciation
For the subjugation of man

War criminals in suits
Pretentious, cowardly vestiges of man
Surrounded by an air of
Undeserved arrogance
Getting fat on young girls
Sending their children to war
Safeguarded by a desk
And the allure of change
Obscene, disgusting animals
Consuming their weight daily
In the profit of drugs and
Devised disease
Profiteers of death
Politicians work the corners

And I fall,
Too weak to carry on
Can't escape my own
Lonely, cold, loveless
Gaze
Black holes in my head
Leading into the depths of
My soul
Emptiness pervading
Madness running rampant
Destroying who I once was
Tearing to pieces
My uniqueness
Stripped of self
Thrown back to march
Within the masses
Towards impending demise

Staring into the eyes
Of the serpent
Turned to stone
Numb to emotion
Numb to pain
I cry out for substance
I miss the person
I used to be
The person you loved
Before you met me

Relieve me now of sin
Unto re-birthing, begin
Relieve me now of this burden
Knowledge and shame
Relieve me now of myself
And self inflicted pain

There it goes again
Making me feel dour
It doesn't feel good anymore
Purge me of this dependency
Ancient, carnal need
Necessity of loathing the infinitesimal

I've met the devil in my dreams
She looked a lot like you
Dreaming in wakefulness
Awakened desire in dreams
What is my intention?

Do I provide a function
Or functionally provide?
Are you living in a nightmare?
Have you gone to sleep and died?

Synesthesia upon awakening
My sensory perceptions
The permutation of the
Infinite

Children of the wilderness
Remove us from the
Impurities of societal disorder
Relieve us of the blandishment
Of media driven fallacies
As the masses are hoarded,
Spoon fed their own flesh,
And directed onward
By the pusillanimous grave robbers
Awarded with the title of
Government official
Given diplomatic immunity
And free reign over
The direction of our lives

There lies a serenity
Beneath the quiet surface
Of the ocean
The ocean floor is vast,
Uninhabited promise

I have developed an acute prescience
For what will come

Man unknowingly conspires
Against himself,
For the good of man
Cannot overcome
The evils of mankind
Conquering in the name of
Worthless ideals
And fruitless endeavors

Conforming to nonconformity
You're only fooling yourself

Wandering about in a dreamy state
With unexplained expectations
For some sort of happy outcome
Welcome to my nightmare
My inescapable kismet
Defend me from myself
I have become
My own worst enemy
Just a hyena looking for
A lions share
More animalistic than
A starving predator

Morally ambivalent
Acting upon
Inconclusive notions
There is no stability
In this loose earth
Sinking ever deeper
Into life unbeknownst
To me
Quicksand enveloping
Sanity and conscience
Leaving behind
Only memories of
What we ought to have
Become

Been suppressing emotion
For so long
Seems like forever
Since I've gone
Numb to the heartache
Blind to the happiness
Rediscovered childhood
At the end of my life

The words become a
Flowing river
My pen cannot dance
Quickly enough
To capture my
Escaping tongue

Discovering escape
Through self sufficiency

Sanity is nomadic
Traveling from
Person to person
Mind to mind
At any given moment
We are all insane
Began as a stream of consciousness and developed into a monster.
This is to anyone out there that's listening
From anyone who ever let you down and went missing
Lovers, parents, best friends, and siblings
Sometimes life conspires to make liars of good men

This is to anyone out there that's listening
From everyone that ever let you down and went missing
Lovers, parents, best friends, and siblings
Sometimes life conspires to make liars of good men

I'm sorry I wasn't who you thought I was
**** it-- I'm sorry I wasn't who I thought I was
I said no matter what, I'd always be there, but that wasn't honest
Because I'm not
And 'cause that ain't how life goes
Broken promise

Growing up, I always thought I was one of the good guys
I thought it was black and white like that
That I could nurture my good side
But I've caused hurt and I've stripped pride
Both on the surface and inside
I wasn't cursed with a dark side, I was just normal
Average, regular, nothing special, I'm telling you
Just being human makes you both God and the Devil's clear replica
I've had my emotions crushed and maybe crushed a few along the way
And at the time, I meant every single word I would say
Every word of love, and every word of hate
Every time I would adore, and every time I'd berate
But time passes, and sometimes those emotions fade
Making liars of both the threats and the promises made

But is a lie really a lie if you mean it at the time?
How can a lie be a lie if you mean it at the time?
A lie can't be a lie if you mean it at the time
How can a lie be a lie if you mean it?

This is to anyone out there that's listening
This is to
This is to anyone out there that's still breathing

I bought a heartbreak hotel
On my own, with no investors
Closed it down and opened the "*******, get over it" bed and breakfast
In loving memory of having loving memories
Of combustible emotions, and having real enemies

Typically poetically dramatic endings
Were once a trademark of mine
Patents pending
And the mighty height of emotions on parting ways
Was always grander than the connections of the early days

When we were fighting, there used to be thunder and lightning
Ferociously frightening, a clash of the titans
Emotions heightened, every single muscle tightened
An addiction to the thrill of the fight, the excitement

Love at first sight always seemed unconsidered
I'd rather love at first fight, and then onto double figures
An unconditional love? Well, that just means nothing
In love with the mere idea of loving something

Always just hunting for that near-life experience
In fear of missing something vital from your own existence
All your emotions subconsciously thought out and scripted
Less about how you're feeling
More about how you ******* depict it

But all that stops when one day you just decide to stop playing along
That point in time when the most amazing things in the world can just as easily seem
Pedestrian

You've lost both that loving and that loathing feeling
Turns out, hell does have a bottom
And heaven, a ceiling
Both love and hate become opaque in time's wake
A face that once summons rage now summons nothing
Whether it's emotions tethered, nerve endings severed
Or just the outlook you acquire when you're a little more weathered
Remaining conscious of this all, and in a way, feeling above it
Still feels like bad riddance to good *******

But is a lie really a lie if you mean it at the time?
How can a lie be a lie if you mean it?
By scroobius Pip
NalaniRose May 2016
if you wish to be a warrior prepare to be broken.
if you wish to be a explorer prepare to get lost, and if you wish to be a lover prepare to be both.
to be a lover meaning you possess a feeling, a spell or desire.
that irresistible urge to be with someone.
that heavenly union, that destiny conspires.
to be a lover takes strength like a warrior. such as loving a person, even when they gave you a thousand reasons not to. to be a lover takes some exploring. a mere attachment, or infatuation. a bond or a yearning? getting lost on what loves really means.
to be a lover we sometimes seek what it means when all its about is, the intermingling of 2 souls, come together to form a whole. we look to deeply to decipher love to code the way in which the caged creature works,
we learn, get hurt, grow love, repeat.
to ever extract its true essence is tough...
Are you ready to be a lover?
Don Moore Oct 2016
Winds from far foreign climes beats upon the Lizard rocks
Gulls driven towards the blackest of crags, yet pass over safely inland
In the darkest skies they wheel and spin as if torn by some giant’s hand
White horses gallop crests of waves as they rush towards tiny harbours
There to crash savagely and rend cut stones from their secured places
Men work to save their boats, fighting the storm which mothers sent
Nature conspires to take their very lives as they struggle with her might
Rocks gnash their teeth and boats not safe yet, pass near their faces
Hoping for the safety of their port, men’s white faces line their gunwales
Black, white, red, blue and yellow, boats colours lost within the spray
These same boats that forge the men they carry out upon the sea’s wrath
But now just seek to bring them safely home to their worried wives
Their women stand upon the quay or stare worried from their windows
Churchyards on the hills above seaside villages filled with headstones
Men’s deaths caused by storms in past times of fishing for their living
Leaving spouses, their children to carry on their traditions and religion
Headstones cut from the very granite of the weather worn Lizard cliffs
Menfolk deep beneath the Cornish loam, there to rest for all eternity
Whilst below in the thrashing storm, the families fight once again
Then as quickly as it came, the storm blows out, waters return to placid
Men stretch their aching backs, those hidden from storm turn out
The ******’s mission helps as it can the fractured families
And church maybe rings for those lost out to sea, never to be seen again
There will be time to mourn, and the village will then lament together
And those who are left, they return to their sacred craft of netting fish
Return to shining calm, to ply their trade, to bring food to this isles shore
Writing a Cornish Faery tale presently, and I felt parts of the book would benefit from some prose at the beginning of a chapter...
Blue Nile echo from shore to shore,
"Poverty in Ethiopia is no more!"

Above all,
From a precipice
To a valley when you majestically fall,
Thunderous over
The damp dell, mountain gorge when you roll,
As usual
With green, yellow and red
Rainbow arched,
Tell Ethiopia loud-
"You children thee very much adore,
A lip service they now abhor!
‘Blue Nile has no lodging,
Yet it loafs a log hauling.' "

Blue Nile, about your deeds to talk
Breathtaking, you served well
The industry without smoke,
But now you have an extra work!
Far
   And
       Wide
Ethiopia will be electrified,
With Blue Nile,
               Gebe,
                    Tekeze... at hand!
Every nook and cranny will get light,
When efforts Ethiopians unite!

The future will be bright,
When a tamed Blue Nile ceases
Unchecked to roar past
Without a respite.

No energy source runs waste
Nor any Plant will suffer a blackout!

Lo and behold Blue Nile will be subdued
For riparian countries' good!

To contribute a brick,
Ethiopians twice you shouldn't think.
Farmers have mounted on a peaceful battle,
To cover the catchment with a green mantle,
To make terrace
On each mountain
Take every pain.
To afforest the depleted f o r e s t!
Thus washing on its sway,
Blue Nile conspires no more
To carry alluvial soil away.

Here of course it is good to recall
The message of Emperor Twedrose.
"Dear guests you are
Amidst people hospitable
Welcome, welcome
Feel at home!
Roam throughout
Abyssinia you might,
On its grandeur your eyes
You can feast.
The vast array of
Mouthwatering dish,
The country parades
You could relish.

In case you wish
For an adventure,
Still Ethiopia
Is a mosaic of culture!

Of course
It will grab your attention,
Ethiopia's being
A cradle of mankind
And ancient civilization.

You will see
To its music titillating,
Comes close nothing!
Moreover fails not
To draw your attention,
The affection
Among people hailing from
Different ethnic groups and religion.
But you can't transport a speck of dust,
Alighted or pasted on your shoe by accident!
So to get an exit,
Shake off your shoe and wash your feet!"

Giving to every dust attention
It is possible to ward off
The problem of siltation.
Besides don't you think
The forests serve a carbon sink?

Blue Nile echo from shore to shore
"Poverty in Ethiopia is no more!"

As though Abyssinia,
Africa's water tower
Is a weakling with no power,
On every news hour,
Portraying Ethiopia
A development backwater,
Also scornfully on a dictionary
Painting its people thirsty and hungry
Have no grounds any!
From a rain fed agriculture
Head on
Making a paradigm shift,
Irrigation when Ethiopia further adopt,
The vicious cycle of drought,
Which poses a threat
To its development,
Will give way to a bumper harvest,
Once more rendering Ethiopia
A cornucopia.

Ethiopians be not cool,
Be not cool
Resources to pool!

Lo and behold Blue Nile will be subdued
For riparian countries' good!

Yet, yet hanging up together
Be high on the alert
Any aggressor to deter!
Many are
Who wear a frowning face,
When development
In Ethiopia picks pace!

Keep open your eyes,
Keep open your eyes
At all time, all space
Where infrastructures
Are put in place.

To the helm of development
Ethiopia will soon catapult,
When its children
In full harness their resources put.
So cognizant of this fact,
Ethiopians allow not
The grass to grow under your feet.
Don't wait
Behind the campaign
To throw your full weight!

For work, roll up your sleeve
Ready for ‘The Renaissance Dam'
Your sweat
B
L
O
O
D
And life to give.
March out for prosperity
In Ethiopia to thrive,
What we need have
Is a bond-cohesive
A

B-O-N-Decisive.
Go all out, go all out,
Us, lucky we have to count
For seizing such a ripe moment.

Blue Nile echo from shore
"Poverty in Ethiopia is no more!"

Come-on let us not beg to differ,
Of course we could concur,
For all of us will agree,
Our pet dream is to see,
Ethiopia industrialized
Completely transformed!

Laying the foundation,
Where on takes off
The future generation,
Is what begs for
Central attention.

Why, Why and Why,
With our hands
Tucked in our pockets,
You and I
Remain standers by?
Also why
Simply watch the clouds
Glide across the sky?
Must we indeed,
Sowing a discord seed
Allow our rivers run wild,
Turning a blind eye to our need.

Wiseacres, though
You may not be on the same page,
Between stakeholders
Don't drive a wedge,
The government proves out
Out to fulfil its pledge.
In life it is not hard
To get sceptics,
Dear leaders talk your walk
Walking your talk!
Prove sceptics wrong
Letting them witness
The actualization
Of the dam agog.

Tax payers, if you have
A tax arrear
See it finds its ways to
The government's coffer.

Taxes being
A development backbone
Must be mysterious to none.

Target also rent seekers
That drive spokes
In to development wheels!
The environment smart Great Ethiopian Renaissance dam that holds promise for regional growth and green resilient economy.Ethiopians are constructing it by themselves with out any aid.
Francie Lynch Apr 2015
For those of us
Who don't understand,
An eleventh dimension
Was necessary
To explain String Theory.

Ergo,

I create another
To do grace,
It's the only answer
For a face
With eyes like stars
Not yet named.

My universe
Now co-conspires
To co-exist
With my desires.
Third Eye Candy Aug 2013
lovers are burning.] balsamic ****** gallops from shame
into the overwild wetness of labial volcanoes, caramelized in musk. by love's labor.
laid bare, their bodies origami inhibition...[ lovers are burning. ]
and surrender is victorious !
Eros is speechless. maidens howl into cumulus goose-down, chewing carnal haikus
with swayed backs.... hips wide and wanton. masculine wands plow oyster beds, unmade.
they joust pearls... and [ lovers are burning ]
.... a damp conflagration; tongue stoked and windswept, conspires.
monotony is slain !
puritan harps are plucked and thrummed ! lewd harmonies anoint the perfect pitch
and a chorus moans. the ghost of sylvia plath, straddles Apollo; and he earns his wreath
surging besotted. [ lovers are burning ] and laurels forgotten.
lotharios charge the seldom road; the starfish door to Saturn's parlor.
pumping unbridled, that glistening, cloven moon. her riding crop insists !
his urgency must do.
satyrs sup salaciously and summon staves to dip in brine. they grin and grind
their sutras, stripping karma gears with silk scarves. ankles to a post, well spread...
cushions crush. flowers press... stamen fed.
nymphs clutch their serpent stones
to drain what nectar slips the slit. they ***** and throat.
they peck and pinch their quivers; knock their arrows to the purpose, half spent.
[ lovers are burning ]
eyes ablaze. nostrils fetch randy fumes of consent. mouths seek.
a pouty swamp with Spanish moss.... finds a matador
and a bull, a china shop.
lovers are burning the rough sketch of a lost god
and their angels are voyeurs
with unclean thoughts

for gospels.
ey yo if you think that 9/11 **** is crazy, take a closer look at jfk pushing those daisies, you could mistake this for the facts of life theme song, sticking its head up the rabbit hole and now you just seem gone, but if you grab on tight and then you pull it, up comes boundless theories of grassy knolls and magic bullets, wheres the love when a 10 year old can a spot a liar with his vision, swiftly points a fat finger at the entire warren commission, what happened we all forgot how to ask questions? lips tremble from a holstered police smith and wesson, never stopped to think if its just water their testing, scapegoats getting arrested, and then promptly murdered, just to take this trip a little further, leaving a **** taste in your mouth like ******* down an entire bag of werthers,
people laugh at 9/11 **** and downplay all the evidence,
but would you put it past a country that murdered their president,
for political gain, theyll put 4 shots through mine and your brain, keep us detained, for days, chuck us in guantamo bay, and then one day we're on a plane flying towards some towers, or wait no we're picking out flowers, bang flash, for my wife, shroedinger's life on the end of this knife, so stop you ***** just listen, this **** may seem sick and twisted, but please wait there is absolutely no reason we live in a police state, thats just what you've been told needs to be done, had consumerism forced down you, and you're told to have fun, and you say thank you and walk way, i'll take my stand another day. and yeah that farmer was an ******* i loved when he got overthrown by the pigs, but we'll wake up one morning and want bacon for breakfast ya dig?
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
haha i don't know if it makes sense that i'm trying to say the person gets thrown in guantanamo and then brainwashed into committing an act of terrorism? well thats what i meant.
Michael R Burch Feb 2020
Komm, Du (“Come, You”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the Valmont Sanatorium, of leukemia and its complications. I had a friend who died of leukemia and he was burning up with fever in the end. I believe that is what Rilke was describing here: he was literally burning alive.

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.

This wood that long resisted your embrace
now nourishes you; I surrender to your fury
as my gentleness mutates to hellish rage—
uncaged, wild, primal, mindless, outré.

Completely free, no longer future’s pawn,
I clambered up this crazy pyre of pain,
certain I’d never return—my heart’s reserves gone—
to become death’s nameless victim, purged by flame.

Now all I ever was must be denied.
I left my memories of my past elsewhere.
That life—my former life—remains outside.
Inside, I’m lost. Nobody knows me here.

English translation originally published by Better Than Starbucks

Original text:

Komm du

Komm du, du letzter, den ich anerkenne,
heilloser Schmerz im leiblichen Geweb:
wie ich im Geiste brannte, sieh, ich brenne
in dir; das Holz hat lange widerstrebt,
der Flamme, die du loderst, zuzustimmen,
nun aber nähr’ ich dich und brenn in dir.
Mein hiesig Mildsein wird in deinem Grimmen
ein Grimm der Hölle nicht von hier.
Ganz rein, ganz planlos frei von Zukunft stieg
ich auf des Leidens wirren Scheiterhaufen,
so sicher nirgend Künftiges zu kaufen
um dieses Herz, darin der Vorrat schwieg.
Bin ich es noch, der da unkenntlich brennt?
Erinnerungen reiß ich nicht herein.
O Leben, Leben: Draußensein.
Und ich in Lohe. Niemand der mich kennt.

Keywords/Tags: German, translation, Rilke, last poem, death, fever, burning, pyre, leukemia, pain, consumed, consummation, flesh, spirit, rage, pawn, free, purge, purged, inside, outside, lost, unknown, alienated, alienation



This is my translation of the first of Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Rilke began the first Duino Elegy in 1912, as a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, at Duino Castle, near Trieste on the Adriatic Sea.

First Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

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!

And so I restrain myself, swallowing the sound of my pitiful sobbing.
For whom may we turn to, in our desire?
Not to Angels, nor to men, and already the sentient animals are aware
that we are all aliens in this metaphorical existence.
Perhaps some tree still stands on a hillside, which we can study with our ordinary vision.
Perhaps the commonplace street still remains amid man’s fealty to materiality—
the concrete items that never destabilize.
Oh, and of course there is the night: her dark currents caress our faces ...

But whom, then, do we live for?
That longed-for but mildly disappointing presence the lonely heart so desperately desires?
Is life any less difficult for lovers?
They only use each other to avoid their appointed fates!
How can you fail to comprehend?
Fling your arms’ emptiness into this space we occupy and inhale:
may birds fill the expanded air with more intimate flying!

Yes, the springtime still requires you.
Perpetually a star waits for you to recognize it.
A wave recedes toward you from the distant past,
or as you walk beneath an open window, a violin yields virginally to your ears.
All this was preordained. But how can you incorporate it? ...
Weren't you always distracted by expectations, as if every event presaged some new beloved?
(Where can you harbor, when all these enormous strange thoughts surging within you keep
you up all night, restlessly rising and falling?)

When you are full of yearning, sing of loving women, because their passions are finite;
sing of forsaken women (and how you almost envy them)
because they could love you more purely than the ones you left gratified.

Resume the unattainable exaltation; remember: the hero survives;
even his demise was merely a stepping stone toward his latest rebirth.

But spent and exhausted Nature withdraws lovers back into herself,
as if lacking the energy to recreate them.
Have you remembered Gaspara Stampa with sufficient focus—
how any abandoned girl might be inspired by her fierce example
and might ask herself, "How can I be like her?"

Shouldn't these ancient sufferings become fruitful for us?

Shouldn’t we free ourselves from the beloved,
quivering, as the arrow endures the bowstring's tension,
so that in the snap of release it soars beyond itself?
For there is nowhere else where we can remain.

Voices! Voices!

Listen, heart, as levitating saints once listened,
until the elevating call soared them heavenward;
and yet they continued kneeling, unaware, so complete was their concentration.

Not that you could endure God's voice—far from it!

But heed the wind’s voice and the ceaseless formless message of silence:
It murmurs now of the martyred young.

Whenever you attended a church in Naples or Rome,
didn't they come quietly to address you?
And didn’t an exalted inscription impress its mission upon you
recently, on the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa?
What they require of me is that I gently remove any appearance of injustice—
which at times slightly hinders their souls from advancing.

Of course, it is endlessly strange to no longer inhabit the earth;
to relinquish customs one barely had the time to acquire;
not to see in roses and other tokens a hopeful human future;
no longer to be oneself, cradled in infinitely caring hands;
to set aside even one's own name,
forgotten as easily as a child’s broken plaything.

How strange to no longer desire one's desires!
How strange to see meanings no longer cohere, drifting off into space.
Dying is difficult and requires retrieval before one can gradually decipher eternity.

The living all err in believing the too-sharp distinctions they create themselves.

Angels (men say) don't know whether they move among the living or the dead.
The eternal current merges all ages in its maelstrom
until the voices of both realms are drowned out in its thunderous roar.

In the end, the early-departed no longer need us:
they are weaned gently from earth's agonies and ecstasies,
as children outgrow their mothers’ *******.

But we, who need such immense mysteries,
and for whom grief is so often the source of our spirit's progress—
how can we exist without them?

Is the legend of the lament for Linos meaningless—
the daring first notes of the song pierce our apathy;
then, in the interlude, when the youth, lovely as a god, has suddenly departed forever,
we experience the emptiness of the Void for the first time—
that harmony which now enraptures and comforts and aids us?



Second Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

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.
But if the Archangel emerged today, perilous, from beyond the stars
and took even one step toward us, our hammering hearts
would pound us to death. What are you?

Who are you? Joyous from the beginning;
God’s early successes; Creation’s favorites;
creatures of the heights; pollen of the flowering godhead; cusps of pure light;
stately corridors; rising stairways; exalted thrones;
filling space with your pure essence; crests of rapture;
shields of ecstasy; storms of tumultuous emotions whipped into whirlwinds ...
until one, acting alone, recreates itself by mirroring the beauty of its own countenance.

While we, when deeply moved, evaporate;
we exhale ourselves and fade away, growing faint like smoldering embers;
we drift away like the scent of smoke.
And while someone might say: “You’re in my blood! You occupy this room!
You fill this entire springtime!” ... Still, what becomes of us?
We cannot be contained; we vanish whether inside or out.
And even the loveliest, who can retain them?

Resemblance ceaselessly rises, then is gone, like dew from dawn’s grasses.
And what is ours drifts away, like warmth from a steaming dish.
O smile, where are you bound?
O heavenward glance: are you a receding heat wave, a ripple of the heart?
Alas, but is this not what we are?
Does the cosmos we dissolve into savor us?
Do the angels reabsorb only the radiance they emitted themselves,
or sometimes, perhaps by oversight, traces of our being as well?
Are we included in their features, as obscure as the vague looks on the faces of pregnant women?
Do they notice us at all (how could they) as they reform themselves?

Lovers, if they only knew how, might mutter marvelous curses into the night air.
For it seems everything eludes us.
See: the trees really do exist; our houses stand solid and firm.
And yet we drift away, like weightless sighs.
And all creation conspires to remain silent about us: perhaps from shame, perhaps from inexpressible hope?

Lovers, gratified by each other, I ask to you consider:
You cling to each other, but where is your proof of a connection?
Sometimes my hands become aware of each other
and my time-worn, exhausted face takes shelter in them,
creating a slight sensation.
But because of that, can I still claim to be?

You, the ones who writhe with each other’s passions
until, overwhelmed, someone begs: “No more!...”;
You who swell beneath each other’s hands like autumn grapes;
You, the one who dwindles as the other increases:
I ask you to consider ...
I know you touch each other so ardently because each caress preserves pure continuance,
like the promise of eternity, because the flesh touched does not disappear.
And yet, when you have survived the terror of initial intimacy,
the first lonely vigil at the window, the first walk together through the blossoming garden:
lovers, do you not still remain who you were before?
If you lift your lips to each other’s and unite, potion to potion,
still how strangely each drinker eludes the magic.

Weren’t you confounded by the cautious human gestures on Attic gravestones?
Weren’t love and farewell laid so lightly on shoulders they seemed composed of some ethereal substance unknown to us today?
Consider those hands, how weightlessly they rested, despite the powerful torsos.
The ancient masters knew: “We can only go so far, in touching each other. The gods can exert more force. But that is their affair.”
If only we, too, could discover such a pure, contained Eden for humanity,
our own fruitful strip of soil between river and rock.
For our hearts have always exceeded us, as our ancestors’ did.
And we can no longer trust our own eyes, when gazing at godlike bodies, our hearts find a greater repose.



Keywords/Tags: Rilke, elegy, elegies, angels, beauty, terror, terrifying, desire, vision, reality, heart, love, lovers, beloved, rose, saints, spirits, souls, ghosts, voices, torso, Apollo, Rodin, panther, autumn, beggar
Aspirations ,prayers,wishes and more,
When it is right ,it's definitely right!
The universe conspires to create miracles and one such miracle is you !

The smell of a familiar me ,connected with cords ,cut but uncut long after they are only to hold you in my arms now connected through heartbeats and love growing strong.

The tiny , soft fingers bound around tightly ,
The twinkle seen through half closed eyes.
Tender skin as soft as snow , whats
there to ask for more ?
A bundle of joy and happiness came fore !
So they say when the time is right , it of course is !

In my hearts core I knew long before,
God choose to give me the best .
Thee! extraordinary from the rest .
A tessellation of wishes came to surface in a matter of time and test .

Your addition to my life brought in a sense of peace ,pride and profoundness.
Rearing to take on the world gearing to accept responsibility.
Surviving every obstacle , a Lioness closely guards and protects her cub , to see him grow into thee "King of the Jungle "


©Mrunalini.D.Nimbalkar
This one was written for my son on one of his birthday !!
Shruti Atri Jun 2014
It's a confusing puzzle,
But still holds true:
You can't live with me;
I can't live without you.

Life is but a journey,
I chose to go through with you;
But now that you won't have me,
It's hard for me to continue.

Fate is a bitter cruel harpy,
With her sisters she conspires
For the death of my Love,
As your Love for me transpires!

Hope is a painful therapy,
It burns while nursing Time's stabs;
But the scars strengthen Experience,
As it assists to keep Reason's tabs.

Love and Reason are antithesis,
That can't co-exist;
But their affinity is such
That to be together they persist.

Perfection in Love is when
There is room for Reason;
But when Reason and Logic court,
Love calls it Treason!

Love is unfair and immature,
And still as pure as a dove;
But there's no use of Reason,
With the death of Love.

This poem is an analogy:
Which in life stands true;
It's no use of me loving you,
If there's no hope for you to love me too.
It's astonishing that we are capable of feeling all-consumed in love, even when our feelings are unrequited or love is lost. We hope, and don't just stop at that...we try to make that singled-out subject of our love happy at every turn and crossroad. No matter that every time we get close enough, the ache of not being with them threatens to tear us apart!
Ah! The human mind and it's impossible romantics! :)
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2013
Poetry Round (find your self within)

We sit together in spirit, if not in body,
You join me in the Poet's Nook,
A few frayed and weathered Adirondack chairs
Overlooking the Peconic Bay,
Where inspiration glazes over the water,
And we drown happily in a sea of words,
Commencing:

You say unto me, whitecaps, I reply,

"Solitary swimmers, poets, arms crooked over head, in the sea of us"

I say flooded with gratitude, and Stephanie replies,

"Thou art my carved destiny-and the river that permits my blood to flood...And all this noise shall fall into poetry; Which every day grows statelier and comelier.

You say to us Moonlight, and we laugh, delighted, for she has given us

"This love can be ours,
Under the iridescent moonlight
Embraced within one another,
To live for an eternity,
Languid and soft"


Someone calls out Bala,
And Vicarpio Gale favors us with his words,

"a poetic rain, in small print, fills the white sky page"

And we pray nightly, that come next morn, he will rain upon us once again

We pretend it is night and there are
Stars to Touch,  but this poet of pax corrects us and writes, t'is but,

"late afternoon sun slanting
behold, jaune compassion
alfalfa ocherous leans willowy in wind
distance of silence yearns on
afternoon shadows lie within majestic vales"


Who is it that calls out
Have Mercie  B.e  upon us,
for she reminds us of what we B.e tasked individually,

"Provoking ideas and intoxicating imagery overflow from within and yet somehow you can't see.  There are dreams that run wild inside of this heart and there is no way I'll let them be tamed"

Sunshineflowers every where,
But even more beautiful when she coaxes us to laugh
at ourselves
when writing of true love,

"Why don't i have bananas, said the monkey.
The tiger said, because you are my soulmate"


Did you C Holmes reminding us that

"when you're certain you've
painted the next Van Gogh
with the swirls and gusts
of blues so pure,
any mortal would
stop stare & lose track of time?"


Fyi, Fyi,

"Her callous persecution insinuates,
The elusive flaws of humanity and life,
It implicitly elucidates,
The sombre reality"


About certain Angels  was writ, that both in heaven and on earth, she was garbed, for

"She wore an air of mysticism
Her memory bore prophetic visions
From ancient egyptian
And judaic traditions
She knows every star system
And every night is a mission
Where she wishes and wishes
For help from the legends"


Emily  has met an unwanted friend, familiar to all of us,

"Cemented shoes
And silenced talk
It's even hard to describe
Writer's block"


Sara B.  from B'kara, that's in Malta, gives advice most sensible,

"Times they are a changing
make everybody feel blue
just turn up the music
and forget what you're supposed to do"


Victor  claims not to be a

"poet, a musician even less
but I may be kind of a beggar
when I beg of you
don't forget me
or let your music fade out
of my rainy days"


Dare I disagree? **** right I do!

Little RedWritingHood,  from my city hails, so wise, far beyond her years, reveals that,

"people try to
make me see reason
or their definition of it
but reason is relative
as is too much in this world"


Should I go on? Why not!

Something's are ForeverMarvelous,  like

"Hurt is fading
Fists are pumping
Bass is trembling
Some are hating-
But I keep dancing"


mybarefootdrives  me forward because

"every seed of thought
starts itself out like a whisper.
Until weight behind words
allows them to stand on their own merit"


Maria GH  could be an old friend, who

"draws me near,
it's slender form bleeding into
the background.
Slowly, kindly,
it extends a hand and
I take it
as to forever hold comfort
in mine"


Andy from Mombasa, your poetry

"conspires to purge me of my sense of reasoning
Leaving me bare to suffer the perils of an incongruous world"

And I am a better poet for it...

Brendan'  I've watched your words,

"Crack the veil of tired souls
cloaked in lonely sorrows,
broken by faithless wanderings,
and feel the strings course through your veins"


I am blindsided and Blastsided  when I read

"Onomatopoeia
I love words
for their meanings
their woven tapestries
but also
for their taste"

For I know exactly what you mean

I am exhausted. So many gems to decorate
My body, my soul. I must stop here,
So many of you have reached out, none of you overlooked.

Overwhelmed, let us sit together now
And celebrate the silence that comes after the
Gasp, the sigh, that the words have taken from
Our selves, from within.

Once again, in your debt.
If I could do nothing more but write your names, I would be endowed with thousand more poems.
OOPs, occurs to me someone may not like my excerpting their work, so let me know if its a problem and will edit....hopefully not and taken as the compliment it was meant to be!
Steele Apr 2015
Do, re, tiring **me.
Fa, So, Latte sounds good.
A sale on tea?
Do ti la "So, how are your scales going?"
My teacher calls; he wants to know.

"FAr from REady." I admit.
I tried to practice steady,
but starbucks had a sale today, so I quit.

"You'll never make the grade like that;
Devote every hour" He says with a glower.
"Go practice your bow. Coffee can wait."
He's right of course, but I still take the bait.

How's a coffee-enthusiast like me
expected to practice enthusiastically?
What's a violinist without caffeine to keep his lights turned to "go"?
When Starbucks conspires to take all my hard earned DOugh?
The struggle, man.
I plucked my soul out of its secret place,
And held it to the mirror of my eye,
To see it like a star against the sky,
A twitching body quivering in space,
A spark of passion shining on my face.
And I explored it to determine why
This awful key to my infinity
Conspires to rob me of sweet joy and grace.
And if the sign may not be fully read,
If I can comprehend but not control,
I need not gloom my days with futile dread,
Because I see a part and not the whole.
Contemplating the strange, I'm comforted
By this narcotic thought: I know my soul.
Hank Helman Feb 2016
Dance for me this one last time,
Tease me naked, sweet pantomime,
Slip-slide your dress but stay your shoes,
Swing-sway your hips, my gorgeous muse.

Wrap round your arms, a prisoner’s chains,
Make me confess and make me strain,  
Offer, tempt me, tease me, sting,
Dance for me and my nomad queen.

Twitter tongues, all kiss no tell,
Secrets, whispers, rumours swell ,
Lies ignite, sparks lust to fire,
Dance for me til death conspires.
When a woman dances for a man...  the ritual hits some evolutionary signal and the watcher become hypnotized. Try it with the one you love or lust. It's primal, stirring, unforgettable.
Michael R Burch Feb 2020
Das Lied des Bettlers (“The Beggar’s Song”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

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 ...

I'm unsure whose voice I’m hearing:
mine or yours.
I implore a trifle;
the poets cry for more.

Sometimes I cover both eyes
and my face disappears;
there it lies heavy in my hands
looking peaceful, unafraid,
so that no one would ever think
I have no place to lay my head.

Originally published by Better Than Starbucks (where it was a featured poem, appeared on the first page of the online version, and earned a small honorarium)

Original text:

Das Lied des Bettlers

Ich gehe immer von Tor zu Tor,
verregnet und verbrannt;
auf einmal leg ich mein rechtes Ohr
in meine rechte Hand.
Dann kommt mir meine Stimme vor,
als hätt ich sie nie gekannt.

Dann weiß ich nicht sicher, wer da schreit,
ich oder irgendwer.
Ich schreie um eine Kleinigkeit.
Die Dichter schrein um mehr.

Und endlich mach ich noch mein Gesicht
mit beiden Augen zu;
wie's dann in der Hand liegt mit seinem Gewicht
sieht es fast aus wie Ruh.
Damit sie nicht meinen ich hätte nicht,
wohin ich mein Haupt tu.

Keywords/Tags: German, Rainer Maria Rilke, translation, beggar, song, rain, sun, ear, palm, voice, gate, gates, door, doors, outside, exposure, poets, trifle, pittance, eyes, face, cradle, head, loneliness, alienation, solitude, no place to lay one's head (like Jesus Christ)



Archaischer Torso Apollos ("Archaic Torso of Apollo")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

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. Otherwise
the firmly muscled abdomen could not beguile us,
nor the centering ***** make us smile
at the thought of their generative animus.
Otherwise the stone might seem deficient,
unworthy of the broad shoulders, of the groin
projecting procreation's triangular spearhead upwards,
unworthy of the living impulse blazing wildly within
like an inchoate star—demanding our belief.
You must change your life.



Herbsttag ("Autumn Day")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

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.
Command the late fruits to fatten and shine;
O, grant them another Mediterranean hour!
Urge them to completion, and with power
convey final sweetness to the heavy wine.
Who has no house now, never will build one.
Who's alone now, shall continue alone;
he'll wake, read, write long letters to friends,
and pace the tree-lined pathways up and down,
restlessly, as autumn leaves drift and descend.



Der Panther ("The Panther")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

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.
Lithe, swinging with a rhythmic easy stride,
he circles, his small orbit tightening,
an electron losing power. Paralyzed,
soon regal Will stands stunned, an abject thing.
Only at times the pupils' curtains rise
silently, and then an image enters,
descends through arrested shoulders, plunges, centers
somewhere within his empty heart, and dies.



Komm, Du ("Come, You")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the Valmont Sanatorium, of leukemia and its complications. I had a friend who died of leukemia and he was burning up with fever in the end. I believe that is what Rilke was describing here: he was literally burning alive.

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.

This wood that long resisted your embrace
now nourishes you; I surrender to your fury
as my gentleness mutates to hellish rage—
uncaged, wild, primal, mindless, outré.

Completely free, no longer future’s pawn,
I clambered up this crazy pyre of pain,
certain I’d never return—my heart’s reserves gone—
to become death’s nameless victim, purged by flame.

Now all I ever was must be denied.
I left my memories of my past elsewhere.
That life—my former life—remains outside.
Inside, I’m lost. Nobody knows me here.



Liebes-Lied ("Love Song")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

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?
Ah, sweet song!



This is my translation of the first of Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Rilke began the first Duino Elegy in 1912, as a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, at Duino Castle, near Trieste on the Adriatic Sea.

First Elegy
by Ranier Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

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!

And so I restrain myself, swallowing the sound of my pitiful sobbing.
For whom may we turn to, in our desire?
Not to Angels, nor to men, and already the sentient animals are aware
that we are all aliens in this metaphorical existence.
Perhaps some tree still stands on a hillside, which we can study with our ordinary vision.
Perhaps the commonplace street still remains amid man’s fealty to materiality—
the concrete items that never destabilize.
Oh, and of course there is the night: her dark currents caress our faces ...

But whom, then, do we live for?
That longed-for but mildly disappointing presence the lonely heart so desperately desires?
Is life any less difficult for lovers?
They only use each other to avoid their appointed fates!
How can you fail to comprehend?
Fling your arms’ emptiness into this space we occupy and inhale:
may birds fill the expanded air with more intimate flying!

Yes, the springtime still requires you.
Perpetually a star waits for you to recognize it.
A wave recedes toward you from the distant past,
or as you walk beneath an open window, a violin yields virginally to your ears.
All this was preordained. But how can you incorporate it? ...
Weren't you always distracted by expectations, as if every event presaged some new beloved?
(Where can you harbor, when all these enormous strange thoughts surging within you keep
you up all night, restlessly rising and falling?)

When you are full of yearning, sing of loving women, because their passions are finite;
sing of forsaken women (and how you almost envy them)
because they could love you more purely than the ones you left gratified.

Resume the unattainable exaltation; remember: the hero survives;
even his demise was merely a stepping stone toward his latest rebirth.

But spent and exhausted Nature withdraws lovers back into herself,
as if lacking the energy to recreate them.
Have you remembered Gaspara Stampa with sufficient focus—
how any abandoned girl might be inspired by her fierce example
and might ask herself, "How can I be like her?"

Shouldn't these ancient sufferings become fruitful for us?

Shouldn’t we free ourselves from the beloved,
quivering, as the arrow endures the bowstring's tension,
so that in the snap of release it soars beyond itself?
For there is nowhere else where we can remain.

Voices! Voices!

Listen, heart, as levitating saints once listened,
until the elevating call soared them heavenward;
and yet they continued kneeling, unaware, so complete was their concentration.

Not that you could endure God's voice—far from it!

But heed the wind’s voice and the ceaseless formless message of silence:
It murmurs now of the martyred young.

Whenever you attended a church in Naples or Rome,
didn't they come quietly to address you?
And didn’t an exalted inscription impress its mission upon you
recently, on the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa?
What they require of me is that I gently remove any appearance of injustice—
which at times slightly hinders their souls from advancing.

Of course, it is endlessly strange to no longer inhabit the earth;
to relinquish customs one barely had the time to acquire;
not to see in roses and other tokens a hopeful human future;
no longer to be oneself, cradled in infinitely caring hands;
to set aside even one's own name,
forgotten as easily as a child’s broken plaything.

How strange to no longer desire one's desires!
How strange to see meanings no longer cohere, drifting off into space.
Dying is difficult and requires retrieval before one can gradually decipher eternity.

The living all err in believing the too-sharp distinctions they create themselves.

Angels (men say) don't know whether they move among the living or the dead.
The eternal current merges all ages in its maelstrom
until the voices of both realms are drowned out in its thunderous roar.

In the end, the early-departed no longer need us:
they are weaned gently from earth's agonies and ecstasies,
as children outgrow their mothers’ *******.

But we, who need such immense mysteries,
and for whom grief is so often the source of our spirit's progress—
how can we exist without them?

Is the legend of the lament for Linos meaningless—
the daring first notes of the song pierce our apathy;
then, in the interlude, when the youth, lovely as a god, has suddenly departed forever,
we experience the emptiness of the Void for the first time—
that harmony which now enraptures and comforts and aids us?



Second Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

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.
But if the Archangel emerged today, perilous, from beyond the stars
and took even one step toward us, our hammering hearts
would pound us to death. What are you?

Who are you? Joyous from the beginning;
God’s early successes; Creation’s favorites;
creatures of the heights; pollen of the flowering godhead; cusps of pure light;
stately corridors; rising stairways; exalted thrones;
filling space with your pure essence; crests of rapture;
shields of ecstasy; storms of tumultuous emotions whipped into whirlwinds ...
until one, acting alone, recreates itself by mirroring the beauty of its own countenance.

While we, when deeply moved, evaporate;
we exhale ourselves and fade away, growing faint like smoldering embers;
we drift away like the scent of smoke.
And while someone might say: “You’re in my blood! You occupy this room!
You fill this entire springtime!” ... Still, what becomes of us?
We cannot be contained; we vanish whether inside or out.
And even the loveliest, who can retain them?

Resemblance ceaselessly rises, then is gone, like dew from dawn’s grasses.
And what is ours drifts away, like warmth from a steaming dish.
O smile, where are you bound?
O heavenward glance: are you a receding heat wave, a ripple of the heart?
Alas, but is this not what we are?
Does the cosmos we dissolve into savor us?
Do the angels reabsorb only the radiance they emitted themselves,
or sometimes, perhaps by oversight, traces of our being as well?
Are we included in their features, as obscure as the vague looks on the faces of pregnant women?
Do they notice us at all (how could they) as they reform themselves?

Lovers, if they only knew how, might mutter marvelous curses into the night air.
For it seems everything eludes us.
See: the trees really do exist; our houses stand solid and firm.
And yet we drift away, like weightless sighs.
And all creation conspires to remain silent about us: perhaps from shame, perhaps from inexpressible hope?

Lovers, gratified by each other, I ask to you consider:
You cling to each other, but where is your proof of a connection?
Sometimes my hands become aware of each other
and my time-worn, exhausted face takes shelter in them,
creating a slight sensation.
But because of that, can I still claim to "be"?

You, the ones who writhe with each other’s passions
until, overwhelmed, someone begs: “No more!...”;
You who swell beneath each other’s hands like autumn grapes;
You, the one who dwindles as the other increases:
I ask you to consider ...
I know you touch each other so ardently because each caress preserves pure continuance,
like the promise of eternity, because the flesh touched does not disappear.
And yet, when you have survived the terror of initial intimacy,
the first lonely vigil at the window, the first walk together through the blossoming garden:
lovers, do you not still remain who you were before?
If you lift your lips to each other’s and unite, potion to potion,
still how strangely each drinker eludes the magic.

Weren’t you confounded by the cautious human gestures on Attic gravestones?
Weren’t love and farewell laid so lightly on shoulders they seemed composed of some ethereal substance unknown to us today?
Consider those hands, how weightlessly they rested, despite the powerful torsos.
The ancient masters knew: “We can only go so far, in touching each other. The gods can exert more force. But that is their affair.”
If only we, too, could discover such a pure, contained Eden for humanity,
our own fruitful strip of soil between river and rock.
For our hearts have always exceeded us, as our ancestors’ did.
And we can no longer trust our own eyes, when gazing at godlike bodies, our hearts find a greater repose.



Keywords/Tags: Rilke, elegy, elegies, angels, beauty, terror, terrifying, desire, vision, reality, heart, love, lovers, beloved, rose, saints, spirits, souls, ghosts, voices, torso, Apollo, Rodin, panther, autumn, beggar
Drifton A Way Oct 2012
Effortless dust conspires with the ephemeral wind's devious desires
Lucid time transpires, while the illusion of life prevails then expires

When I need you, you're elusive, fleeting and distant
When I have you, you're abusive, cheating and resistant
When I leave you, you're reclusive, retreating, and nonexistent
When I bereave you, you're conclusive, defeating, and insistent

I rely on you to pass, mend and heal all my wounds, and cleanse the stain
I admire you in class, am reminded on full moons, and lose you in the rain

Blatant slaps in the face, blessed with you to waste, then we ask what you're worth
Silent gaps lost in space, stressed with a ******'s chaste, been by her side since birth
Eat the scraps fall from grace, obsessed with the taste, so many hungry facing dearth
Burned maps without a trace, pressed to make haste, as you tick down upon the earth
Zani Jun 2017
Welcome to the feast
We all come here for the hunger
Come and take a seat a while
Lets talk of friends
Lets talk of style


Elizabeth Squires
She is one to admire
Connecting the dots
So that love may transpire

Kim Johanna Baker
By God’s blessings and grace
Makes this portal
A magical welcoming place

Then there’s Temporal Fugue
Who’s magic awakens
With his humour
Much of my time he has taken

TSPoetry is a royalty
With his noble voice honours me
How much sense that I make
From the words that you’ve choiced

Donna Jones
The three line queen
Pure joy through her literature
Now I’m forever dreaming Haikus

Ouise Godsent Abode
He knows
With five lines he unravels
Then tickles your bones

z-blossom your stanzas
Are so pleasing to the eye
How the vivid words ring
To my ears as sublime

CGY Your haikus
They have blown my mind
To collide with Benji’s
Beautifully long, flowing write

Ghostwriter and Mykayla shea
Even though I rarely see ye
I’ve read through most your poetry
And hope that there’s loads more to read!

As for Clark Dave Hitchens
I just read him in my kitchen
This way I found a witty rhyme
But not to undermine his brilliance

Janae you are on it
Red Flag, Daydream,
Magic Kiss, Invisibility,
Brain *****

Vlassis I will quote you
When I need to charm a woman
Otherwordly Wanderer
When some hope I need to summon

God bless to Tyler Mathews
He is posting every day
I hope the universe conspires
For us to carry on that way!

To learn of freeform prose I can
Take a scroll to SR Millan
And if I want a treat dessert
Ellie Graves has tonnes and tonnes of work!

Zhanuary Arielle
So much passion your words tell
I feel I understand them
Natural imagery does us well!

Marie James Alexander
I pandered to the thought of you
When I put Ramen in my soup
I chuckle at some words you choose

Daniel Steven Moskowitz
Your poetry endless
Your writing is phenomenal
Your arguments relentless

Camiliamhd I wish that I
Could read what you are saying
When I read your pretty poetry
I feel like I am praying!

Vanessa Gonzales
She has got the attitude
With Fredrick Njoroge block style
They push onto higher altitudes!

Kesha You have peirced me
With your double barrel stanzas
I had to go read SoulSurvivor
To practice on my Mantras

Now that the round is over
It is time for us to feast
I thought that I'd invite you
So that we'd have a chance to meet

Thank you all for being
Thank you all for caring
Thank you all for sharing
Thank you all for reading

<3
Bon Apetit!
Elvis okumu May 2012
I feel as if, the world conspires against me. Wondering day by day just how it is going to get in my way. Gone it seems has the flavor that colored my actions with interest. Left only with the barest of actions that inspire the desire and thirst for life. I feel as if I labor in vain like Sisyphus cursed to push my ambitions up the hill of my toil just to have them rolled back to where I began. I grow weary of this existence, tire easily at this fate. My mind finds an escape to wonder blissfully of paths never taken of how good life could have easily been. And so I begin to question my self as I sit alone on this abysmal shelf with nothing more than my thoughts to keep me company. What is the point of this seemingly pointless journey.  Why do I toil like a simple servant advancing the goals of others while mine own sit there neglected. It is a question that I on many a occasion have reflected, as I stood time and time again bereft of any goal or ideal. Is it merely character that is being built, others will tell me that I build morals that will serve me in my future. Still others commend me for the sacrifice I show, and for a time I grow content with that. But in the end I find that I have not moved, have not progressed in anyway that I can see. So I go on to deep myself worthless, and my mind and body dull from their lack of use. I have ambition more than I can handle. What I seem to continually lack is the resource then the resolve to see it to completion. I see the ones who have climbed to the heavens to dine with God himself and I ask myself. What do I miss? What don't I know? What has escaped me such that I cannot seem to soar higher than this meager place. And yet an answer does not show it's self to me. And so I stay and ponder these things. Where the answer will come I do not know. Where I will go, I have nothing but the question mark as an answer to show. But somehow I know that someday I shall move past this blocked way. And there lies the hope I hold closely that in the end my work and my toil will not be wasted. Not be put under the tag of useless. I hold that hope and that is the way I continue to press my way through this world.
Ankit J Chheda Jul 2016
Things aren't going in my favour..

It's like the universe conspires against me

May be I don't deserve her,
May be I am not good enough

What happened? Where did I go wrong?

There is a wall between me and my abilities

I let them down... I let myself down. I don't know what to do

Why?

Why can't I just do this, this one thing?

I don't feel like going out.. I don't want them to see my weakness

I don't want to be happy, because this important thing has become the centre of my universe, and my inability to do this is ruining my self worth

Can I ever be happy?

Can I take this load off my mind, these shackles that make it hard to breathe?

The weight of the world and its responsibilities is slowly killing me

I'll fix it, I'll try and fix it.. Its been three weeks, I know I am late, but I will fix it, even though there are a hundred others things I can get done

I know I can do this, I have done it before.. and yet, there is a lurking fog in my mind that is not letting me think clearly

I wish I could just give everything up

I don't want to be with them, I don't want to be the worthless ******* in the room, in any room. I don't deserve them anyways

I happened to land the job my chance, I don't know if I am good enough for it

Would she ever notice me? .. why would she ever love someone like me?

I think I don't love myself. I don't know how

The night is good.. no people. No one to deal with, no one to remind me of how incompetent I am at life. Escaping

Let me take a nap, I think it'll help sort my thoughts out

... I'll do it later. I'm not in the mood right now, not feeling it

I am scared. I am lonely

I wonder how much easier everyone's life would be, if I just died, or never existed..
From anxiety, depression and self inflicted mental scars. No one should feel like this, no one should have to live feeling like a burden on themselves and others. If you feel like this, please seek help. The world is a wonderful place to be in, and people are very accepting. Love yourself, be kind, and remember, things ALWAYS get better.
Didn’t I hear you say the lawn I would mow?
Sundays come and Sundays go.

Grasses are taller so are the ****
Season is going where’s the flower seed?

Words aren’t taxed you use them free
Said this Sunday you would clean the chimney.

Wash the toilet scrub clean the commode
Sundays come piles up workload.

Lot of things to mend lots to replace
Why Sundays trudge in leisurely pace?

Why the bed conspires the morn breathes chill
Why must I lie back to get the Sunday feel?

Why Sunday is one day and not a whole week
Comes up the Monday devilish and bleak!

Sundays will come and Sundays will go
*As for my work only a poem or two to show!
Philipp K J Dec 2018
It's hard  to change any cult
More so the jealous from the occult
Faculty of the melting mold of mind
Zealous of inflicting conflicts of all kind
To the just and graceful among mankind.

Brazenly different from vogue dears
conspires to inspire its rogue peers
To smear even slur on  godly seers.
Constantly configures to figure out,
Anything,  by any means to spy out
The faintest attribute of the virtuous
Contributes to trigger the rash jealous
To fling out and pierce the gall
to gush out to spread and stall
The arteries, nerves to blood-en
the face and the cheeks to redden
Nose and the chin to harden
Ear lobs to burn and burden.

The jealous is well known
Yet the cause is unknown
Why does it vent its ire
Dent and impair the fair 
Engage in freelance
To abuse in parlance
In parliaments of vanity fair

The evil avail many a company
Of gluttons, covetous avaricious
sloth, sensuous pride and many
Engage merely to rage in ferocious
Fire, the fuel of the evil in the savage dark ages
obsessed in rampage and carnage

All celebrations become  aberrations  
Of the essence of celestial  presence
The din dares to dampen the spiritual
Asphyx the specifics in fad rituals

It is difficult to change the cult
of the stinky melting mold
of the evil minds that find
new felony ways to inflict conflicts
To the just and graceful lives
of the peace loving among mankind.
Isoindoline Oct 2012
Anesthesia seeps into me and settles
like plaque into my arteries
where it converses with my blood.
I let its ugly yellow fingers swagger through,
waving their malicious banners
proclaiming my surrender.

My lungs breathe chafing dust
that conspires
and leaves me suffocating
under the silent sands of guilt
that build up into graceful dunes.

My mind loves the desert in my lungs
despite the lifeless contours;
it is far away, removed and sees
a sweeping landscape, patterned
by the winds, my rattling breath.

But my heart lives next door
to that forsaken terrain.
It feels the pain of the parched *****,
gone unacknowledged by my mind.
It feels the lecherous caress
of the ugly yellow fingers
that violate my blood,
stroking, disgustingly, inside my veins.

Still my mind remains
Doorless
Windowless
Refusing to see.
Serenely smooth, impenetrable Reason.

My heart has no hands
to hold a hammer or a sword.

Yet Your tongue is a sword,
Your words a hammer of consciousness,
Your expression the oil to reignite
shimmering embers buried under ashes.

My mind’s shield becomes an eggshell—
it shatters, flinging shards away,
letting the newly lit inferno roar
through every capillary, burning away
the ugly yellow fingers.

Winds from within gust through my lungs,
force the desert from my chest.
The sand rends my throat and lips
in its storm of escape,
and the blissful tears that rain from my eyes
quench my arid lungs.

The fire recedes into my heart, where it burns
white-hot and pure—
My eternal sun that gleams within,
to You, I surrender.
Raj Arumugam Oct 2010
hang on tight, baby -
keep your senses wide
for we're going on a roller-coaster ride;
scream as much
but just hang on tight, baby -
hang on for dear life


times are tough
more than ever;
bills come at the speed of bullets
taxes gather like summer flies
and debts ricochet against our walls;
the banks want more and more
but there's just air in our pockets


hang on tight, baby -
keep your senses wide
for we're going on a roller-coaster ride;
scream as much
but just hang on tight, baby -
hang on for dear life


the jobs dry up and
the dollars dwindle into cents;
permanent becomes temp
and temp becomes non-existent;
full-time goes into part-time
and part-time into casual
and casual into zilch


hang on tight, baby -
keep your senses wide
for we're going on a roller-coaster ride;
scream as much
but just hang on tight, baby -
hang on for dear life


nature conspires with the economy,
sweetheart:
she sends rains and fire and landslides;
she claws sands off the beaches and
all we have left are
government ******* and *******
who care a hoot about our fish and chips


hang on tight, baby -
keep your senses wide
for we're going on a roller-coaster ride;
scream as much
but just hang on tight, baby -
hang on for dear life


time's not on our side either, sweetheart;
mind you, with mighty puffed cheeks
he blows H1N1 flu round the globe
and so sends people and customers away
and those who remain turn cheap and nasty
and all these pigs want are discounts and freebies


hang on tight, baby -
keep your senses wide
for we're going on a roller-coaster ride;
scream as much
but just hang on tight, baby -
hang on for dear life


the collection agencies are knocking, dear -
it sounds much like the knock of death
in Beethoven's ninth;
the mortgage barbarians are on their horses
and they send writs and auction threats
and re-possessions


hang on tight, baby -
keep your senses wide
for we're going on a roller-coaster ride;
scream as much
but just hang on tight, baby -
hang on for dear life


O hang on, sweetheart,
hang on tight:
many will fall, many will bleed
but those who hang on tight
and those who can love
those who can dream together
they will ride the nights out into clear day


hang on tight, baby -
keep your senses wide
for we're going on a roller-coaster ride;
scream as much
but just hang on tight, baby -
hang on for dear life
a song for our times, that is, during this world credit crunch (1st published online 2009/05/31)
(RDD-BBA)
~~~~
The universe conspires as mirror to mine soul's eye,
I see myself as best friend
Or worst enemy.

I feel and see thy painted canvas in mine sky,
turning blue, with clouds
of white, trees of green.

Treasure map on hand.
And lullaby in mind's eye
Thine courage wisdom, grace my true north compass is.

First time I ever saw thee
Mine lovers face !
The poetess in me began
in poem to trace it's magic.

The friend in my mirror,
I now see is also thee.
And in thy mirror
yee too can see me.
Confidant, I love thee.

I sow myself in mirror clearly
and I learned to love
myself in thine eyes poetry.
Thine wild bird of paradise
I too in word paint.

The best poetry we devour
and share fully, roots
from our own hearts,
Forever in love.
~~~~~~
Karijinbba- rdd/bba
at Mr and Mrs Andrews.
https://youtu.be/5fE4_8b0490
George Krokos Nov 2010
I
Today my heart is beating a sorrowful tune
and I don’t really know if it will end soon.
Since your departure all seems to be amiss
a pale reflection of that once heavenly bliss.
I have been left stranded on an alien shore
to fend for myself groping near your door.
The aftertaste of delight which our union once exuded
lingers on now in memory and feels like I was deluded.
Something doesn’t seem to be quite the same
even though I remember and repeat your name.
Your presence was what made the difference then
such a tangible feeling: will you not come again?
  I can only endeavour to lure you back once more
  so please don’t any of my genuine efforts ignore.

II
I look for you everywhere that I happen to go
but where you’re to be found I’d like to know.
Some say you’re in the heart and to look within
while others assert that you’re in the next of kin.
Life is really a situation of relationships with you
and knowledge of the ways of love gets us through.
If we come across difficulties and obstacles by love they’re resolved
which engenders compassion and understanding as it gets involved.
There are many people in the world who look in all the wrong places
searching for the same thing here in the available surrounding spaces.
Hoping that what they’ll find is what their heart most desires
and to fulfil this craving their mind with their heart conspires.
  Our inner being or soul though is the silent witness observing it all
  and expresses itself as our higher conscience when we heed its call.

III
To suffer in the agony of a lover’s separation we learn
that being away from the Beloved makes the heart burn.
It is even worse when the Beloved has gone away not saying why
and the lover has been left alone in the throes of love high and dry.
The heart cannot bear the pain of love in separation
and the mind seeks to achieve a suitable reconciliation.
When the power of love rules the heart mind hastens to obey
and doesn’t need any other reason to cause unwanted delay.
If all the lover’s efforts to a reunion only end in despair
then it may be better to let the matter rest awhile there.
True love cannot be really denied except at a great personal cost
and in desperation we seldom realise the value of what’s been lost.
  There is a saying that: ‘love will always find a way’
  and that a heart full of love over the mind holds sway.

IV
As I was never given a reason why you suddenly left
I can only assume that there isn’t one and love is bereft.
The heart has its own reasons which the mind can’t fathom
so the mind depends on the heart for matters in its *****.
Where the Beloved goes there the lovers also have to follow
because love is the magnet that draws them all nigh to go.
When the fragrance of love is in the air and lovers imbibe its scent
the intoxicating effect is a strong potion which on the heart is bent.
Man’s feeble mind relies more on the heart when the matter of love is concerned
but if the mind dominates and rationalises through the intellect love is adjourned.
If the mind of the lover is centred in the heart where the play of love is unfolding
it will experience anguish and misery when the Beloved anything is withholding.
  All true lovers will always seek the company and well-being of their beloved
  and are never satisfied with remaining at a distance if love is being uncovered.

V
Whose fault is it may I enquire if anyone falls irresistably in love
and the processes of love in separation overwhelm as from above?
What can one really do but follow wherever their heart leads
and undergo the agony in seeing that love is not displeased.
In seeking the pleasure of the Beloved one’s life becomes fulfilled
which otherwise would remain barren like a desolate land untilled.
When the Beloved sows the seeds of love in the fertile soil of one’s heart
all that was in there when that time comes must be sublimated or depart.
The arrows of love seek to pierce their target which is the heart of the lover
and the Beloved is the one drawing the bow with intent to **** we discover.
To die for love is much better than to live without we’ve heard often before
and those who lose their life in the cause of the Beloved will live forevermore.
  When the heart is purified and pure love is awakened by the Beloved’s grace
  any who are the recipients thereof realise that love in separation has its place.
Private Collection - Five sonnets written 1996 and modified slightly in 2010
Pearson Bolt Dec 2016
the survivors of Auschwitz
put god on trial in absentia
and sentenced him to death.
a fitting end
for a supposedly
omnipotent deity
that couldn’t be bothered
to lift a finger.

if the cross was god’s
critique of power
then why is fascism
on the rise once more?
if Jesus died
for the lost sheep,
then why are politicians
evoking his name
while banishing refugees?

where was the love of god
when our cluster-bombs fell
on kids playing soccer
in Palestine
and U.S. drone strikes
stole the lives
of a wedding party
in Yemen?

if god is not surely dead
then he was never real
in the first place.
Stendhal had it right all along:
god's only excuse
is that he does not exist.

but i met a girl
who so loved the world
that she’d give her life
for a stranger in an instant.  
her name means “helper.”
she is fragile as bone
and sturdy as ancient oak.
she is the only tangible reality
in a world henceforth
without gods or masters.

and i’m watching her wither away.

so i petition
the nebulae
watching over
this pale blue dot
not to avert their eyes.
this heroine of mine,
made in the heart
of a dying star,
would sacrifice her life
for the least of these.
but i am selfish.
i want her to stay,
to stand up and fight,
poison-free.

and if the universe conspires
to take her life, then i will find
the tomb of god and bring
him back from the dead
just to strangle him again.

stay with me, always,
through the long night.
help me heal this silent planet.
if god will not love this earth,
then we will.
heal us of our war, our hate,
our addiction.
i cannot abide a world without you.
Hollow Jul 2014
Let me love you
Love you tender
I'll hold it above you
You'll always remember

Let me kiss you
Lips of fire
My burn won't miss you
My soul conspires

Let me feel you
**** sedation
Hook and reel you
Primal predation
Julian Sep 2020
DISCLAIMER: READ THE WHOLE THING IT IS MUCH MORE GENIUS TOWARDS THE END



Bypass the circumlocutions of elementary rhetoric and the obvious bulges into the ethereal realm of supersolid supercalendar emigrations of the wednongues of vogue emigrating into a new frontier of boundless awakening that blisters the sore solid metaphors of a crumbled bricolage of articulate history becoming a reiterative gabble of entropy that curdles the blood-boiling hatred of those envious of those that capitalize on the true girth rather than the flaccid otiose etymology of differential physics becoming a denatured figment of prideful imagination on a frolic with desuetude in the normalization of the wernaggles of ewnastique that defile the ridicule of even the most astute aspirations of those that despise history rather than reveling in its subtle ironies that swelter in connotation rather than suborn the cadged bridewells of those that are estranged by the Dousk Remix rather than the Voulez-Vouz Danser populism of true urbacity expanded upon a national stage as an anthem not for profligate saturnalia but rather an ode to the odium of the reckless titanism of titanic intellects clashing with the dudgeons of intermittent eye-rolling irreverence double-dealing a stacked deck of pleckigger on an intellectual stagecraft for bandwagon apostasy that leads to solidarity among tentative allegiance. We barnstorm for a grift in the grimace of an alpenglow winter to lead to the salvation of all people united under the banner of neat nexility rather than long-winded elocution reserved only for notched caliber against the nativist diatribe that serves the subservience of the engineer of the white chattel indoctrinated into turnstiles of professed irreverence for demarches of solidarity that is gainsay for gain rather than pittances for pitfall. Rhetoric should be duly curtailed against the overcomplication of hypertrophy and trimmed into the sweet success not of saccharine fads of foofaraw but engineered resistance that galvanizes albatross intellectualism into a revved engine without purpose that mobilizes because of estranged impotence in the revelry of the subtle rather than the cordial tethers of emergent entelechy of the esemplastic orthobiosis that we should all strive for not just as pioneers of the socially engineered harbingers of a remedial society but also for the trendsetters that communicate with the canvass and the celluloid rather than spelunking dormitage of drifted anomaly perceptible to everyone but heralded as prominent by the rigged ambeer of a toxicity of a plumage of city over state and country over planet. We need to provide the verdure of the verdant forest that survives the conflagrations of rage indoctrinated by systematic attempts at stilted ignorance that is engendered more by Leftism than Right-Wing thinkers because in general when observed in organic settings we notice that the Right-Wing escapes the sloganeered jaundice of limited bounds for otherwise boundless thought and provides more seminal pathways that reconcile normative virtues with entrenched inveterate harbingers of economic success. The faulty deadstocks that propel the retinoise of the anomaly among Leftism to disregard the girouettism of a world that is so piebald with dishonesty that it elects a patronage that seethes with passion but aimless in its curiosity for deeper embedded candor because the popular might count themselves among the aristocratic Left but the truly Promethean belong to a centrist tribe that borrows the ingenuity of spurned but never spurious interpretations of a sputtered history that remarks with revelry  rather than disdains with #CancelCulture irreverence that seeks to deracinate all context for insipid utopianism that is a shared prerogative of the delusional Left against their complaints of Sebastomania among right-wing zealots that are equally invalidated by the frogmarch of a dilettante history curbed in storms of a pure tempest rather than a banal reiteration of novelty phrased with participant intonation rather than blathers of whispered arbitrage ennobled by hypocrisy immune to criticism among those that crusade for economic justice without understanding formal flombricks of the true gnomic riddles of alchemy fundamental to global panoramic pleonasms becoming the aleatory vagary of admonished warning that spars against spartanism. Instead of pilfering from the exorbitant defalcation of immunized partisan bromides against the ratcheted warranty upon defective obsolescence we must coalesce around the imperious ****** of divinity bequeathing the living water of a fully-lived life that qualifies its felicity not by junctures but by an overall harmony that conforms to the finicky demands of an overly polarized complexion of dimpled conformity founded on girouettism that earns more traction than the deasil sundial emergence of brimstone rejection for alabaster limelight we must urge others to ditch the conformist utilitarian usucaption of the usufruct of manipulative sports for domineering talents suborned into inclement straits because of unwitting albatross that replicates into a fission of uniformity encapsulated in the half-assed witticisms of attempted belletrist succeeding only in alienating the noxious fumes of alveolate diminutive reduction rather than expansive detritus that scrapes the wreckage of a turmoil to build masterworks out of broken sculptures themselves indemnified from a categorical judgment by the panoramic oversight of proctored civilized ambition. We need to exhort self-education that hinges upon not a listless acquiescence to a second-exit impulsive barnacle to the urchins of brimstone because of an insipid blather of flapdoons of brittle banality because the hackencrude is an outmoded entity to the vast resources of the sizable capital of the growing power of the intelligentsia over the weakened grasp and wrangle of terminus meeting consuetude weakly enough with pleasantry to appease but ultimately a complete witwanton persiflage of sizzled destruction rather than the savory contemplation of the cotqueans of majesty derided but never derailed by terminal revivals because the generativity of the titanic original might not be a popular indoctrination but the liberated thought of the untethered is ultimately more decisive in world affairs than the synergistic hive of bees building an imperious defense against dynasty built only upon provincial hatred of hidebound illiteracy combustible into the brazen bravado of a reckless intrepid effrontery against civilized chains into the ******* of complicit interconnection rather than dissolved dissolutions that solve global problems more fundamentally rather than driving through avenues of wide pressures gilded with expansive growth but ultimately bereaved by the ultimate succor of the youthful exuberance of captive audiences rather than the wily connivance of genius unbounded. God is obviously a benevolent provider of all bounties and despite the conspiracies that predicate heterodoxy the uniform mannequin of a mascot Democracy ultimately becomes a fickle bandwagon allegiance to relationship rather than a true witness to authentic ******* to a subservient relationship to a creative God synergized with energies that should exceed all galloped windlass into demarche and expose rather than rundles of ridicule interminable because of the permanence of kitsch memorial rather than living sculpture that breathes a swiveled light that beckons preened self-accountable responsibility to a dutiful matriotic duty of optimism rather than a contrarian futility of those that despise the unequal suave crackjaw dementia of the temulentia of derangement among crowds that provide fewer bounties and more deprivations calculated to indenture need rather than motivate want. We must motivate want by fueling ambition rather than quelling dissent in defensive posture because that strategy of antinomian discord is a dead-end street against an inveterate enmity that can never be fully deposed but only opposed with nominal futility raging with violence rather than seething with the motivation to reform because reform is an efficacy mobilized. Novelty of wednongue propriety grown through the heirs of drastic impertinence gilded from the siphon of lavadero hypogeiody blasphemous in bletonism that guards a piebald scrivelo because the sought dementia of an overwrought alacrity is a purpose without a terminus but an ambition soaring through scraped ice cream stratosphere that marvels at the minutiae of the civilized anthill that becomes a beehive of industry when the rationale of moral reform becomes insuperable rather than suborned into effete recursive cycles of pittances of pitfalls obsessively pondered but never solved because the fustilugianation of a forever tampered travesty is the esemplastic rejection of a categorical aim that leans of windlasses of elegance that surpass the levy of hatred and achieve sizable filagersion to squirm above the squawk upon populace rather than the consternation of an urbane but cloistered metropolitan arrogance contravened by the historical emergence of happenstance locales fostering the most well-guarded treasures of bohemian pedigree rather than dimpled resolve faffling on ergasia in bromidrosis rather than cavorting with a skeptical indoctrination by default evaded by those that equate an improbable scenario with a definitive solution to acatalepsy quandary because by reckoning with indeterminacy we grow in historical lineaments and solve global detritus by recycling the rattled brevity of promontory preens of plumage into a recursive ostentation defalcating heavily from sturdy macroeconomic proofs of the trendsetter rather than the trend and therefore grapple with profound personalized disdain rather than cordial harmony. Essentially by the logical positivism of proof we remind ourselves that obviously a chattering blather swims in tentative irony as long as it is a penultimate relativity because the lack of capstone ensures that the relevant treads beneath the mountain of rapprochement in benign endeavors to survive and thrive in definitive conclusion rather than intermediary conclusions of amnesia in jaundice. By the gnomic apothegms that guard the fortress of the demassified we have quantulated that the preposition of continuance is in fact a guarantee of the fickle supremacy of the recent and even more preponderantly the supremacy of expectancy of latent junctures that never manifest becoming a dictatorial rule of driven alacrity of wastrels that should fast from conclusive opinion and rather favor the primordial fabric of the inveterate truths rounded by the conversion of alchemy solidified by calculated canon converging with esoteric apartheid against the simultagnosia of the simpleton drivel of primordial myths bowdlerized from history neither lewd nor depraved but moribund because of the conclusive ****** of a peremptory intermediary certainty predicating a more precise foresight. The lackluster luster of numinous foghorn subliminal graft is a nativist confusion of legionnaire mettle swaddled by the cosseted grasp of interminable boundaries that demarcate linear time even when supersolid filigrees of elemental confusion erratically swerve into oblivion that becomes a forestalled happenstance so hapless that the connivance of alveolate synergies necessarily precludes event from becoming indelible because the tentative judgment wallops the tributary incontinence of the warble of axiolative jaundice materialized by crystalline fabrication neutered by soundbyte sclerotic calculus inveterate in summations of conclusion only because of peremptory weights upon geometric certainties rather than logarithmic dampers of attenuation that spar against spartan priggish epithets upon the flamboyant grit of grisly specter of speculative sepulchral venal vanity. The timberlask cineaste irony of the partisan usucaption of sapwood is a pirated timber of startled alarm becoming a useful or useless cacophony of barnstorm for the deadstock of past cadasters of rigmarole in the docimasy of pretense in impartial circumstance in specialized oratory bounded by a hemmed bailiwick of verdure denatured by the flombricks of subtle persuasion that ignores minority fringes of opinion that occupy that majority that cowcatchers brush aside rather with cruel contemptuous unkempt slippery agenda for drivel that spawns ingeminated redoubled explosions in participle bias rather than conglomerate arraignment of arrayed brooked swamps turgid not with the pettier travesty but the charade of a brokered ceremonial calculation against the wrikpond spurious by degeneration into corruptible complicity that thrives in obscurantism but never obscurity when the omnified owns a capitalized swiftboat of never a temulentia but always an optimism in the curvature of lineaments into the self-educated shepherd of the ultimate autarky rather than insubordination in the scrappy schlep of demographic ripples of swift enrichment at great personal flops in the floppy disk of a Democratic enrichment rather than a parched rectiserial hidebound tome. A quirky time stanched by tomes of patricide against family ingratiated by parrots to anthem but lacking the lettered verve of ignoble but parsed parsecs of finite light captivated into prismatic conscience we launch the demerited ploys of foible into the heralded controversy rather than the unheralded mercenary hands behind dogmatic ripostes livid because of the suave prestidigitation of the sublime mastery of the syncopated irony of mismatch attuned to radical rhythm we become bloated slaves to a rich lineage decried widely in attempts of covert coup raxes of a largesse of continual primipara perversions of courted cotqueans of uxorious justice that by defalcating from tributary orthobiosis in specious conjecture esteemed by rattled martexts aspiring for fraternal solidarity with the ****** esteem masquerading as the auctioned flivver that the merchandise of fluminous optimism cannot be an effusive blanch of blarney bolstered by bumptious bromides of brunt blackmail but rather the artform of subterfuge needs the insidious and invidious traction of creepy Thriller subtlety to garner the vapid traction of immobilized discontent foster to malcontent rarely abridged by even the most polite courtesy of diplomacy because of inherently insatiable demand that it skulks in undetected quarters flexing in the shadowy penumbra of transparent crackjaw enigma becoming an obvious blister or a gabble of raw jaundice sweltering into thermolysis by the eventual convergence rather than the improbable divergence of fissile time beckoning its own flashy revolution while denaturing the very presence of delusion as a herald more of the authenticity of animadversion rather than the sclerotic carapace of ragged asphyxiation in the aplomb whisper entombed forever by milquetoast inefficacy in hypersensitivity rather than a flourished malfeasance of a predatory grip upon seizure among catatonic graves of incontinence braving tribulation for crucibles of the most prosodemic surgeries of the furtive froward recalcitrance of deliberation in ignominy that enables that transmogrified skyscraper of Titanic lies to become a sunken vessel of harbored prestige lost on penultimate dice rather than winning pokerish villiany. Essentially the jeer of Morel Under a Disco is a winning brandished authority to chug the capers of inscrutable difference in blandishment imposture to cavort with an elegant plot twist that enthralls abiding decay to revert into a primordial confidence of livelihood to deter the frogmarch of time into the despairing quagmires of a livid balkanization of a simultagnosia of ageotropic monoideism fomented on fervor that leads to the paralysis of privacy and the expedited furor of moribund depraved proclivity so that the offset of morale and rationale can outfit civilization to brave the tempests of cordial divisions cemented by courtesy in order to safeguard against the yeggs of paranoia seeking ultimately the craven caper of disillusioned subconsciously felt retraction of indelible deeds into evaporated constructs that vanish too quickly to spawn the vigor of a cadged and utilitarian expanse of reiterative generativity that sustains the spanned sapience of primordial alacrity to ensure that brevity in outlook becomes longevity in subsistence because without a logical positivism grounded in unshakable tenets of God the demoralization of the vast majority is ensured and entombed in aimless squalor that leads to sheepish temerity compounded by wistful latency in regretful regression rather than a spandex bluster of a bravado of obesity to weather the persnickety wednongues of perdurable badges of instinctual shame slandered into prima facie denatured transmogrified cultures seeking cosmogony out of ordinary bricolage because the eventful triage of the nimble eludes parochial sight while the vastly capable outfox and outpace with such frenetic verve that they fasten against accident and transcend against heterochrony in ridicule that the unseasonable but seminal sauce flavors better the partially indentured optimism of a curated matriotism better than it serves the obviously interminable cycle of listless demiurges of malcontent that fuel conflagration rather than reformation to their own remorseful peril. Thereby, it is obviously concluded that to micromanage a society you must exert the capacity of a selective magnetism obviously predicated on demassified capacities for oaths of gratitude to endear and endure in the humane heart for the majority that sway few but encounter many that they find proper scruple grounded on axiomatic God to sustain not a lifeless priggish inclination but a bounded felicity that is not a carapace of an indigenous and insidious decadence to the extent pursuits of happiness swelter among the marginalized majority bereaved in powerless squalor slave to temptation not to derelict fascination but to provide aim to aimlessness and predicate their worldviews not on Racial Identity Theory which postulates too many counterintuitive pessimisms that are essentially neutered fustilug predicates of a world that requires such drastic seismic reforms in societal dynamics that the earthquake capable of such a realignment would exceed a 10.5 on the Richter scale which is 32x more powerful than the biggest earthquake in recorded history that would be so catastrophic in its implicit implication of the pretense that the consummation of the theory achieves the traction necessary to jostle every crowd into alignment that the collateral damage would endanger the very integrity and vitality of the Republic itself while exerting a tremendous existential dread of radical permutation that enables many travesties that abnegate the prerogatives of a privileged society in search of a facetiously engineered impossible utopia that could only be achieved by a dictatorial authoritarianism working in concert with benumbed sloganeering to engineer pessimism and malcontent rather than nurture the fair-natured optimism of a society that flourishes because it assumes naturally that the universe conspires in the favor of prosperity. If any hint of casuistry is evident in these postulates I wouldn’t be surprised but for rhetorical sanctity it is necessary for a nation bereaved of national icons not to despise the captive imagination of tyrannical transparency but grow from the liberating and partially liberal parable of a life maximized in limber for romantic enthralled growth that heralds with due consideration the paragons of time with reverence rather than soundbyte enslavement of parochial interminable twinges of a newborn and widely shared collective guilt of a decisively antinomian and pessimistic view on the evolution of human societies beyond catchy kitsch verve nexilities of bravado mutilating thirsts for inclusive mandates that are Boa Constrictors prowling with serpentine vitriol to vastly over-represent extreme fringes to dissuade nuclear families in an overt ploy of depopulation because the truer pathway to liberation is one that feeds the hot hand in the casino and bets that the winners will always win by deregulating their ability to bet large sums because of a transcendent supersolid mastery of time that the march and demarche of a boundless prosperity gouged by the fair demands of egalitarianism enables the card counter to achieve such a decisive advantage that his indentured socially coerced eleemosynary inclination to feed the flock endures throughout all epochs because of the necessary and incumbent scruples of God-fearing men to distribute their winnings won by cheating time to conquer time itself.
Holly Salvatore Jul 2013
Before the universe
Exploded onto this canvas
There was a crawlspace
A cave
In a church basement

A pinprick of strange matter
Floating unfettered
In space
And after years of careful planning
Years of careful manipulation

A balloon pop
A BIG BANG
Of people places things
Life and solar systems to fill the church basement
Fill the void

God had blueprints and maps
The universe conspires
And the stars align
God mad picket fence plans
Painted this infinite canvas
Just so I could meet you
And we could become us
Michael R Burch Nov 2020
This is my translation of the first of Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Rilke began the first Duino Elegy in 1912, as a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, at Duino Castle, near Trieste on the Adriatic Sea.

First Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

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!

And so I restrain myself, swallowing the sound of my pitiful sobbing.
For whom may we turn to, in our desire?
Not to Angels, nor to men, and already the sentient animals are aware
that we are all aliens in this metaphorical existence.
Perhaps some tree still stands on a hillside, which we can study with our ordinary vision.
Perhaps the commonplace street still remains amid man’s fealty to materiality—
the concrete items that never destabilize.
Oh, and of course there is the night: her dark currents caress our faces ...

But whom, then, do we live for?
That longed-for but mildly disappointing presence the lonely heart so desperately desires?
Is life any less difficult for lovers?
They only use each other to avoid their appointed fates!
How can you fail to comprehend?
Fling your arms’ emptiness into this space we occupy and inhale:
may birds fill the expanded air with more intimate flying!

Yes, the springtime still requires you.
Perpetually a star waits for you to recognize it.
A wave recedes toward you from the distant past,
or as you walk beneath an open window, a violin yields virginally to your ears.
All this was preordained. But how can you incorporate it? ...
Weren't you always distracted by expectations, as if every event presaged some new beloved?
(Where can you harbor, when all these enormous strange thoughts surging within you keep
you up all night, restlessly rising and falling?)

When you are full of yearning, sing of loving women, because their passions are finite;
sing of forsaken women (and how you almost envy them)
because they could love you more purely than the ones you left gratified.

Resume the unattainable exaltation; remember: the hero survives;
even his demise was merely a stepping stone toward his latest rebirth.

But spent and exhausted Nature withdraws lovers back into herself,
as if lacking the energy to recreate them.
Have you remembered Gaspara Stampa with sufficient focus—
how any abandoned girl might be inspired by her fierce example
and might ask herself, "How can I be like her?"

Shouldn't these ancient sufferings become fruitful for us?

Shouldn’t we free ourselves from the beloved,
quivering, as the arrow endures the bowstring's tension,
so that in the snap of release it soars beyond itself?
For there is nowhere else where we can remain.

Voices! Voices!

Listen, heart, as levitating saints once listened,
until the elevating call soared them heavenward;
and yet they continued kneeling, unaware, so complete was their concentration.

Not that you could endure God's voice—far from it!

But heed the wind’s voice and the ceaseless formless message of silence:
It murmurs now of the martyred young.

Whenever you attended a church in Naples or Rome,
didn't they come quietly to address you?
And didn’t an exalted inscription impress its mission upon you
recently, on the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa?
What they require of me is that I gently remove any appearance of injustice—
which at times slightly hinders their souls from advancing.

Of course, it is endlessly strange to no longer inhabit the earth;
to relinquish customs one barely had the time to acquire;
not to see in roses and other tokens a hopeful human future;
no longer to be oneself, cradled in infinitely caring hands;
to set aside even one's own name,
forgotten as easily as a child’s broken plaything.

How strange to no longer desire one's desires!
How strange to see meanings no longer cohere, drifting off into space.
Dying is difficult and requires retrieval before one can gradually decipher eternity.

The living all err in believing the too-sharp distinctions they create themselves.

Angels (men say) don't know whether they move among the living or the dead.
The eternal current merges all ages in its maelstrom
until the voices of both realms are drowned out in its thunderous roar.

In the end, the early-departed no longer need us:
they are weaned gently from earth's agonies and ecstasies,
as children outgrow their mothers’ *******.

But we, who need such immense mysteries,
and for whom grief is so often the source of our spirit's progress—
how can we exist without them?

Is the legend of the lament for Linos meaningless—
the daring first notes of the song pierce our apathy;
then, in the interlude, when the youth, lovely as a god, has suddenly departed forever,
we experience the emptiness of the Void for the first time—
that harmony which now enraptures and comforts and aids us?



Second Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

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.
But if the Archangel emerged today, perilous, from beyond the stars
and took even one step toward us, our hammering hearts
would pound us to death. What are you?

Who are you? Joyous from the beginning;
God’s early successes; Creation’s favorites;
creatures of the heights; pollen of the flowering godhead; cusps of pure light;
stately corridors; rising stairways; exalted thrones;
filling space with your pure essence; crests of rapture;
shields of ecstasy; storms of tumultuous emotions whipped into whirlwinds ...
until one, acting alone, recreates itself by mirroring the beauty of its own countenance.

While we, when deeply moved, evaporate;
we exhale ourselves and fade away, growing faint like smoldering embers;
we drift away like the scent of smoke.
And while someone might say: “You’re in my blood! You occupy this room!
You fill this entire springtime!” ... Still, what becomes of us?
We cannot be contained; we vanish whether inside or out.
And even the loveliest, who can retain them?

Resemblance ceaselessly rises, then is gone, like dew from dawn’s grasses.
And what is ours drifts away, like warmth from a steaming dish.
O smile, where are you bound?
O heavenward glance: are you a receding heat wave, a ripple of the heart?
Alas, but is this not what we are?
Does the cosmos we dissolve into savor us?
Do the angels reabsorb only the radiance they emitted themselves,
or sometimes, perhaps by oversight, traces of our being as well?
Are we included in their features, as obscure as the vague looks on the faces of pregnant women?
Do they notice us at all (how could they) as they reform themselves?

Lovers, if they only knew how, might mutter marvelous curses into the night air.
For it seems everything eludes us.
See: the trees really do exist; our houses stand solid and firm.
And yet we drift away, like weightless sighs.
And all creation conspires to remain silent about us: perhaps from shame, perhaps from inexpressible hope?

Lovers, gratified by each other, I ask to you consider:
You cling to each other, but where is your proof of a connection?
Sometimes my hands become aware of each other
and my time-worn, exhausted face takes shelter in them,
creating a slight sensation.
But because of that, can I still claim to be?

You, the ones who writhe with each other’s passions
until, overwhelmed, someone begs: “No more!...”;
You who swell beneath each other’s hands like autumn grapes;
You, the one who dwindles as the other increases:
I ask you to consider ...
I know you touch each other so ardently because each caress preserves pure continuance,
like the promise of eternity, because the flesh touched does not disappear.
And yet, when you have survived the terror of initial intimacy,
the first lonely vigil at the window, the first walk together through the blossoming garden:
lovers, do you not still remain who you were before?
If you lift your lips to each other’s and unite, potion to potion,
still how strangely each drinker eludes the magic.

Weren’t you confounded by the cautious human gestures on Attic gravestones?
Weren’t love and farewell laid so lightly on shoulders they seemed composed of some ethereal substance unknown to us today?
Consider those hands, how weightlessly they rested, despite the powerful torsos.
The ancient masters knew: “We can only go so far, in touching each other. The gods can exert more force. But that is their affair.”
If only we, too, could discover such a pure, contained Eden for humanity,
our own fruitful strip of soil between river and rock.
For our hearts have always exceeded us, as our ancestors’ did.
And we can no longer trust our own eyes, when gazing at godlike bodies, our hearts find a greater repose.



Archaischer Torso Apollos ("Archaic Torso of Apollo")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

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. Otherwise
the firmly muscled abdomen could not beguile us,
nor the centering ***** make us smile
at the thought of their generative animus.
Otherwise the stone might seem deficient,
unworthy of the broad shoulders, of the groin
projecting procreation's triangular spearhead upwards,
unworthy of the living impulse blazing wildly within
like an inchoate star—demanding our belief.
You must change your life.



Herbsttag ("Autumn Day")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

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.
Command the late fruits to fatten and shine;
O, grant them another Mediterranean hour!
Urge them to completion, and with power
convey final sweetness to the heavy wine.
Who has no house now, never will build one.
Who's alone now, shall continue alone;
he'll wake, read, write long letters to friends,
and pace the tree-lined pathways up and down,
restlessly, as autumn leaves drift and descend.



Der Panther ("The Panther")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

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.
Lithe, swinging with a rhythmic easy stride,
he circles, his small orbit tightening,
an electron losing power. Paralyzed,
soon regal Will stands stunned, an abject thing.
Only at times the pupils' curtains rise
silently, and then an image enters,
descends through arrested shoulders, plunges, centers
somewhere within his empty heart, and dies.



Komm, Du ("Come, You")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the Valmont Sanatorium, of leukemia and its complications. I had a friend who died of leukemia and he was burning up with fever in the end. I believe that is what Rilke was describing here: he was literally burning alive.

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.

This wood that long resisted your embrace
now nourishes you; I surrender to your fury
as my gentleness mutates to hellish rage—
uncaged, wild, primal, mindless, outré.

Completely free, no longer future’s pawn,
I clambered up this crazy pyre of pain,
certain I’d never return—my heart’s reserves gone—
to become death’s nameless victim, purged by flame.

Now all I ever was must be denied.
I left my memories of my past elsewhere.
That life—my former life—remains outside.
Inside, I’m lost. Nobody knows me here.



Liebes-Lied ("Love Song")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

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?
Ah, sweet song!



Das Lied des Bettlers ("The Beggar's Song")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

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...

I'm unsure whose voice I’m hearing:
mine or yours.
I implore a trifle;
the poets cry for more.

Sometimes I cover both eyes
and my face disappears;
there it lies heavy in my hands
looking peaceful, instead,
so that no one would ever think
I have no place to lay my head.



Keywords/Tags: Rilke, translation, German, first elegy, Duino, elegies, angels, beauty, terror, terrifying, desire, vision, reality, heart, love, lovers, beloved, rose, saints, spirits, souls, ghosts, voices, torso, Apollo, Rodin, panther, autumn, beggar

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