Posts Tagged ‘Rilke’
I am, unquiet one.
I’m preparing a translation of Rilke’s Das Buch vom Mönchischen Leben – here is “Ich bin, du Ängstlicher. Hörst du mich nicht”.
I am, unquiet one. Do you not hear me,
with all my senses hurtling toward you?
My feelings, which found wings,
whitely orbit your countenance.
Do you not see how near to you
my soul stands cloaked in silence?
Does my Maytime prayer not ripen
before your eyes, like a tree?
If you are the dreamer, then I am your dream.
But when you wish to keep watch, yes,
I am your will, and make all holiness great,
and ring myself around with a star’s silence
above the wondrous city of time.
Image (C) Barnaby Thieme.
As the hour bows down to touch me
My translation of Rilke’s first poem from The Book of Monastic Life. The original may be found here.
As the hour bows down to touch me
with a clear, metallic toll,
shaken by my senses, I feel, I can —
and I grasp the malleable day.
Nothing was complete before I saw it;
a particular, fixed becoming.
My glances are ripe, and to each,
like a bride, comes that for which he longs.
Nothing is too small for me, I love it nonetheless,
and paint it great and against a golden field,
and hold it high, and I do not know from whom
the soul is set free…
Image: Cologne Cathedral, by Barnaby Thieme.
Mesocosm 