Greek Love-Talk
What I have already learned as a lover,
I see you, beloved, learning angrily;
then for you it distantly departed,
now your destiny stands in all the stars.
Over your breasts we will together contend:
since as glowingly shining they've ripened,
so also your hands desire to touch them
and their own pleasure superintend.
poem by Rainer Maria Rilke
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Music
Take me by the hand;
it's so easy for you, Angel,
for you are the road
even while being immobile.
You see, I'm scared no one
here will look for me again;
I couldn't make use of
whatever was given,
so they abandoned me.
At first the solitude
charmed me like a prelude,
but so much music wounded me.
Translated by A. Poulin
poem by Rainer Maria Rilke
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Song Of The Sea
(Capri, Piccola Marina)
Timeless sea breezes,
sea-wind of the night:
you come for no one;
if someone should wake,
he must be prepared
how to survive you.
Timeless sea breezes,
that for aeons have
blown ancient rocks,
you are the purest space
coming from afar...
Oh, how a fruit-bearing
fig tree feels your coming
high up in the moonlight.
poem by Rainer Maria Rilke (1907), translated by Albert Ernest Flemming
Added by Dan Costinaş
Comment! | Vote! | Copy! | In Spanish | In Romanian
What Survives
Who says that all must vanish?
Who knows, perhaps the flight
of the bird you wound remains,
and perhaps flowers survive
caresses in us, in their ground.
It isn't the gesture that lasts,
but it dresses you again in gold
armor --from breast to knees--
and the battle was so pure
an Angel wears it after you.
Translated by A. Poulin
poem by Rainer Maria Rilke
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Poet
O hour of my muse: why do you leave me,
Wounding me by the wingbeats of your flight?
Alone: what shall I use my mouth to utter?
How shall I pass my days? And how my nights?
I have no one to love. I have no home.
There is no center to sustain my life.
All things to which I give myself grow rich
and leave me spent, impoverished, alone.
poem by Rainer Maria Rilke
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Blank Joy
She who did not come, wasn't she determined
nonetheless to organize and decorate my heart?
If we had to exist to become the one we love,
what would the heart have to create?
Lovely joy left blank, perhaps you are
the center of all my labors and my loves.
If I've wept for you so much, it's because
I preferred you among so many outlined joys.
poem by Rainer Maria Rilke
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Again And Again, However We Know The Landscape Of Love
Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
poem by Rainer Maria Rilke
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Moving Forward
The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
That I can see farther into paintings.
I feel closer to what language can't reach.
With my senses, as with birds, I climb
into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
in the ponds broken off from the sky
my falling sinks, as if standing on fishes.
poem by Rainer Maria Rilke
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Wait
It is life in slow motion,
it's the heart in reverse,
it's a hope-and-a-half:
too much and too little at once.
It's a train that suddenly
stops with no station around,
and we can hear the cricket,
and, leaning out the carriage
door, we vainly contemplate
a wind we feel that stirs
the blooming meadows, the meadows
made imaginary by this stop.
Translated by A. Poulin
poem by Rainer Maria Rilke
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
A final house stands at this hamlet's site (In diesem Dorfe steht das letzte Haus)
A final house stands at this hamlet's site,
as lonesome as the final house on earth.
The road, unhindered by the hamlet's girth
keeps walking slowly out into the night.
The hamlet is but a transition side
of two expanses, anxious, terrified;
its walk along the houses mere relay.
And those that leave the hamlet wander wide
and many die perhaps along the way.
poem by Rainer Maria Rilke (19 September 1901), translated by Walter Aue
Added by anonym
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!