"rainer" poems
Perhaps I want everything:
the darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shimmering blaze of every step up.
So many live on and want nothing,
and are raised to the rank of prince
by the slippery ease of their light judgments.
But what you love to see are faces
that do work and feel thirst.
You love most of all those who need you
as they need a crowbar or a ***
You have not grown old, and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.
*Rainer Maria Rilke / The Book of the Hours
(translated by Robert Bly: German)*
S T, 20 July 2013
Jul 20, 2013
Jul 20, 2013 at 10:38 AM UTC
Whoever has no house now will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone
Will sit, read, write long letters through the evening
And wander on the boulevards, up and down...
- from Autumn Day, Rainer Maria Rilke
Its stain is everywhere.
The sharpening air
of late afternoon
is now the colour of tea.
Once-glycerined green leaves
burned by a summer sun
are brittle and ochre.
Night enters day like a thief.
And children fear that the beautiful daylight has gone.
Whoever has no house now will never have one.
It is the best and the worst time.
Around a fire, everyone laughing,
brocaded curtains drawn,
nowhere-anywhere-is more safe than here.
The whole world is a cup
one could hold in one's hand like a stone
warmed by that same summer sun.
But the dead or the near dead
are now all knucklebone.
Whoever is alone will stay alone.
Nothing to do. Nothing to really do.
Toast and tea are nothing.
Kettle boils dry.
Shut the night out or let it in,
it is a cat on the wrong side of the door
whichever side it is on. A black thing
with its implacable face.
To avoid it you
will tell yourself you are something,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening.
Even though there is bounty, a full harvest
that sharp sweetness in the tea-stained air
is reserved for those who have made a straw
fine as a hair to **** it through-
fine as a golden hair.
Wearing a smile or a frown
God's face is always there.
It is up to you
if you take your wintry restlessness into the town
and wander on the boulevards, up and down.
7.8k
You have always found a way
to inflate yourself,
a thunderhead of you
a rainer upon parades
keeping your own side dry.
Praise your portolio,
record yourself accomplishing that,
but wait, there’s more of you
the lost boy
dressed as a hero.
The prison of ego comes first,
then the crippling psychic wounds
and the inevitable chaos
that just ****** you off
because there is just too much to manage
and you cannot do it alone
but you don’t dare tell anyone
so you fake it
and you don’t make it
and one day
while you are too busy
refusing to be grateful
for the awesome mystery of your own chi
a tagger defaces your BMW
in the parking lot of Whole Foods
and you weep into your tofu.
Apr 15, 2013
Apr 15, 2013 at 7:28 AM UTC
Liebes-Lied (“Love Song”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation 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!
Original text:
Liebes-Lied
Wie soll ich meine Seele halten, daß
sie nicht an deine rührt? Wie soll ich sie
hinheben über dich zu andern Dingen?
Ach gerne möcht ich sie bei irgendwas
Verlorenem im Dunkel unterbringen
an einer fremden stillen Stelle, die
nicht weiterschwingt, wenn deine Tiefen schwingen.
Doch alles, was uns anrührt, dich und mich,
nimmt uns zusammen wie ein Bogenstrich,
der aus zwei Saiten eine Stimme zieht.
Auf welches Instrument sind wir gespannt?
Und welcher Geiger hat uns in der Hand?
O süßes Lied.
Keywords/Tags: German, translation, Rainer Maria Rilke, love, song, music, soul, vibrate, vibration, dark, space, darkness, instrument, bow, strings, hands, voice
Feb 25, 2020
Feb 25, 2020 at 6:26 PM UTC
You are not surprised at the force of the storm—
you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:
he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window.
The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees' blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought
you could trust that power
when you plucked the fruit:
now it becomes a riddle again
and you again a stranger.
Summer was like your house: you know
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.
The days go numb, the wind
***** the world from your senses like withered leaves.
Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.
Book of Hours, II 1
Nov 3, 2012
Nov 3, 2012 at 1:36 PM UTC
Fuji, Rainier, now to Africa’s pinnacle
she followed, behind a parade of sycophants
marching, single file behind his greatness
few made ascents with him
she only Fuji, on a windless day
though others made the trek up Rainer,
surviving a blizzard that hit halfway
down
she told her lover
his faithful must have thought his presence
imbued them with immortality
which he seemed to possess
maybe it did, the lover said
seven decades and one, still *******
old mountains and young women
and she was still there, despite
the doctors’ bleak sentence
she was painting, moving
while she still could, a water color
of Rainier in mist, hanging in some
haunted hall in his home
now a pale pastel of Kilimanjaro
for which he would spend a fortune, to hang
somewhere he would not spend a minute
when her extended contract expired
she would be ashes scattered in Big Sur
and he would still be climbing higher
breathing heaven’s ether, a color
she never captured
but her signature
would be on overpriced art
which from the start, he commissioned
to keep her from leaving without
having seen rarefied air
Nov 16, 2015
Nov 16, 2015 at 10:49 AM UTC
. . . go out into the evening,
leaving your room, of which you know each bit,
your house is the last before the infinite, . . .
(from Rainer Maria Rilke's "Eingang", MacIntyre translation)
The light which strikes my retina
as I look at the Great Galaxy in Andromeda
left there two million years ago.
(Hominids made tools from stone then, but had not yet
learned the use of fire.
Genetic material from certain of these hominids has been passed
from one being to another and now is in my own body.)
Millennia from now, humans who have
colonized the farthest reaches of our galaxy,
laboriously creating and maintaining Earth-like atmospheres,
will marvel that there once was a place so perfectly suited to
human life
that such labor was unnecessary. (Just as we marvel that orchids,
whose precise temperature and humidity requirements would seem to necessitate a greenhouse, grow wild in the Amazon.)
I cannot believe in a personal God,
intervening in human affairs, but stand in awe
of the terrible force which set the stars and galaxies in motion
--strewing them like so much confetti--;
the life-force running through each living creature,
as straight and true as a ray of light from that galaxy in Andromeda,
willing us to live, grow and be fruitful.
Jul 30, 2017
Jul 30, 2017 at 4:04 PM UTC
ALL THE IMPORTANT POETS
One day I found all the important poets -
Shakespeare, Bukowski, Dickinson and Rilke
partying in the park drinking Coronas,
feeding pigeons on the green.
Astonished I queried,
"You are all my thought heroes, and yet you laze about.
"Shouldn’t you be writing something famous?"
And they erupted in a literate cacophony of guffaws,
their eyes tearing,
their cheeks shining red with mirth.
Shakespeare turned to me and said,
"Forget it kid !
Meter, metaphor, rhythm and rhyme -
it’s all just groundlessness.
All the adjectives in the world divined just so
only lead to a place in your heart
you’ll never really understand anyway.
It’s simply a mystery, ineffable."
Bukowski tried to ask Rilke about the letters
he'd written to that frustrated young poet,
but he was so drunk on cooking sherry
he could only mumble, gesticulate and grin.
And then sweet Emily said,
"Yes. William is right.
Rainer Marie tried to explain it.
Charles tried to drink into it,
yet it remains the glass bead game -
ungraspable by dearest turn of phrase.
So we have decided to put down our pens
and take a breather."
She quietly handed me the bag of crumbs,
suggesting I toss a few here and there
for the pigeon's lollygagging by.......
"They're hungry, the simple little dears," she said.
Jan 4, 2012
Jan 4, 2012 at 11:19 PM UTC
The leaves are falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no".
And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.
We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It's in them all.
And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Sep 14, 2014
Sep 14, 2014 at 10:05 PM UTC
I love all beginnings, despite their anxiousness and their uncertainty, which belong to every commencement. If I have earned a pleasure or a reward, or if I wish that something had not happened; if I doubt the worth of an experience and remain in my past--then I choose to begin at this very second.
Begin what? I begin. I have already thus begun a thousand lives.
Rainer Maria Rilke (Early Journals)
Jan 1, 2015
Jan 1, 2015 at 12:28 PM UTC
If your daily life seems of no account, don't blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its treasures. For the creative artist there is no impoverishment and no worthless place. (Rainer Maria Rilke)
Paris, February 17, 1903
Letters to a Young Poet
Jul 27, 2014
Jul 27, 2014 at 7:35 PM UTC
sleeping waking swallowing breathe in breathe out in out in out breathing breathing breathing through the heat through the wind through the hurt and dreaming grows so maddening and praying so desperate rainer i hear you your monsoon tears pattering on roof slowly wearing away my pièce de résistance in a perfect world everything imperfect would feel perfect belonging through the cold through the damp through the chill there are no more mountains barely a tree nothing dares to stand nowhere a tower 2 eyes too many hungry strangers beg taunt rob who knows the way what sign? the sun defiantly stares rude invasive heavy summer glare women glance beyond smile shimmering for someone else walking running racing towards autumn cooling in the place where sad women know trouble respecting women when they do not respect themselves i love women so deeply and courage has grown so weary and longing so great i bow to you rainer through the dark through the light through the dark
Jun 15, 2010
Jun 15, 2010 at 5:49 AM UTC
in Duino
no access for us
to rainer maria's view
across the sea
from the castello
a servant of
il principe
who owns the place
and whom we happen
not to know
bars our way
beyond the open gate
therefore:
no elegies
Mar 17, 2015
Mar 17, 2015 at 6:57 PM UTC
this is a grave of cottonwood trees
pale light flickering across my upturned face
from under black crowns he examines the shapes i make
with my mouth, colour uneven as a rainer cherry
creamy and pink
in an arc of white he will saturate my feathers
as i play dead, in the glade between his legs
does he imagine, i wonder, the circuits i will i make
in the endless blue above his head
May 24, 2010
May 24, 2010 at 5:38 PM UTC
Der Panther ("The Panther")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
His weary vision's so overwhelmed by iron bars,
his exhausted eyes see only blank Oblivion.
His world is 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.
Keywords/Tags: Rainer Maria Rilke, German, translation, sonnet, panther, cat, animal, nature, extended metaphor, analogy, allegory, freedom, eyes, vision, iron, bar, bars, cage, prison, world, star, light, starlight, stride, orbit, electron, atom, particle, power, will, paralyzed, impotent, abject, pupils, curtain, curtains, image, shoulder, shoulders, heart, emptiness, loneliness, alienation, death, void
Feb 25, 2020
Feb 25, 2020 at 6:55 AM UTC
**Let yourself not be misled by the notes
that fall to you from the generous wind.
Wait watchfully. Hands that are eternal
may come to play upon your strings.**
Early Journals
Sep 8, 2014
Sep 8, 2014 at 11:21 AM UTC
Lifting my eyes from the book, from the tightly sequenced lines
to the full and perfect night:
Oh how like the stars my buried feelings break free,
as if a bouquet of wildflowers
had come untied:
The upswing of the light ones, the bowing sway of the heavy ones
and the delicate ones' timid curve.
Everywhere joy in relation and nowhere grasping;
world in abundance and earth enough.
Rainer Maria Rilke---Uncollected Poems
Jan 3, 2013
Jan 3, 2013 at 1:56 PM UTC
*Fate doesn't merely want happiness,
but pain back as well as outscreamed distress,
and buys ruin at a second-hand rate.*
{this quote comes from "The Voices}
Jul 8, 2015
Jul 8, 2015 at 1:04 AM UTC
A sound is lying between my sight and my hearing,
mornings strung astray,
noisy, lonely streets, indescribable,
only posters ― whole or torn
of some extraordinary concerts, long forgotten ―
in which lustre of the world? ―
autumn has come over the botanical garden,
her trellises have forgotten to support any leaves,
she is singing herself to me in my eyes
in one poem.
Diligent, my heart surrenders to an elegy
like that thought descending from Rainer Maria Rilke.
Gellu Dorian, from It might take me years
Oct 9, 2016
Oct 9, 2016 at 1:45 PM UTC
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
Then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear.
You, send out beyond your recall.
Go the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
And make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
-A poem by Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 - 1926
Translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows
Aug 17, 2017
Aug 17, 2017 at 10:08 PM UTC
Over and Over
Over and over,
no matter how vividly
we know love's landscape
and the lost cemetery
with its sad names
and the chasm into which
the others have fallen,
once again we walk together
beneath ancient trees
and lie down entwined
among the blossoms
facing the sky.
- trans. mce
Autumn Day
God, the time is now.
Summer was vast.
Drop your shadow
across the sundials
and loose your breath
upon the fields.
Command the last fruits
to fullness,
allow them a few warm days
to discover ripeness
and press their sweetness
into heavy wine.
No time remains
to seek refuge.
If you are now alone
you will remain so
for a long, long time.
You will stay up late,
writing letters
to no one,
restlessly wandering
the hollow streets
while the leaves
tumble aimlessly.
- trans. mce
Apr 10, 2015
Apr 10, 2015 at 7:50 PM UTC
“Your silence has been with me and I have let it have its say. I feel, as always, the same closeness to you which your silence makes into a kind of speech of its own.”
Anne Sexton
"and if I remember
you are my memory
and if I forget
you do not fade away"
E. E. Cummings
"Your body is away from me
but there is a window open
from my heart to yours.
From this window, like the moon
I keep sending news secretly."
Rumi
"I am learning to see. I don’t know why it is, but everything enters me more deeply and doesn’t stop where it once used to."
Rainer Maria Rilke
Jun 10, 2015
Jun 10, 2015 at 5:05 PM UTC
Find out the reason that commands you to write;see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart;confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.-Rainer Maria Rilke
Nov 22, 2015
Nov 22, 2015 at 2:01 PM UTC
Rilke's angels
11:11
More Muslim than Christian
2237
I was in Austria
Just a few days
Sonnets to Orpheus
Shakespearean plays
Rainer Maria
Lesbian poets
Roses and thorns
Goes forth and so its
Angels above me
Jesuit justice
Alex attentive
Gonna break, Gonna bust this
Chicago!
Mar 26, 2023
Mar 26, 2023 at 11:18 PM UTC