I Love the Dark Hours / Rilke

I love the dark hours of my being.
My mind deepens into them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend, and understood.

Then the knowing comes: I can open
to another life that's wide and timeless.

So I am sometimes like a tree
rustling over a grave site
and making real the dream
of the one its living roots
embrace:

a dream once lost
among sorrows and songs.

Love Song / Rilke

How can I keep my soul in me, so that 

it doesn't touch your soul? 

How can I raise it high enough, 

past you, to other things? 

I would like to shelter it, 

among remote lost objects, 

in some dark and silent place 

that doesn't resonate when your depths resound. 

Yet everything that touches us, 
me and you,takes us together 
like a violin's bow, which draws 
one voice out of two separate strings. 

Upon what instrument are we two spanned? 

And what musician holds us in his hand? 

Oh sweetest song.

Evening / Rainer Maria Rilke

Evening
Rainer Maria Rilke

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;

you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;

and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion
of what becomes a star each night, and rises;

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.

Einsamkeit (Loneliness)

Einsamkeit (Loneliness) by Rilke, 1902, translated by Philipp Kellmeyer

#0.
Loneliness is like a rain.
It rises from the sea toward evening;
from plains, which are distant and remote,
it goes to the sky, which always has it.
And only then it falls from the sky on the city.

It rains down in the twilight hours,
when all streets turn towards morning 
and all bodies, which have found nothing, 
leave each other, sad and let down; 
and people who hate each other, 
have to sleep together in one bed:

then solitude flows with the rivers... 


#1.

Loneliness is like a rain.
It raises from the sea towards the evenings;
from plains that are far and remote,
it goes to heaven, that always has it.
And only from the skies does it fall on the city.

Pours down in the twilight hours,
when all streets turn towards morning
and all bodies, which have found nothing,
leave each other, sad and let down;
and when people who hate each other,
have to sleep together in one bed:

then loneliness goes with the rivers…

#2.
Solitude is like a rain.
It rises from the sea toward evening;
from plains, which are distant and remote,
it goes to the sky, which always has it.
And only then it falls from the sky on the city.

It rains down in the in-between hours,
when all the crooked streets turn toward morning,
and when the bodies, which found nothing,
leave each other feeling sad and disappointed;

and when the people, who hate each other,
have to sleep together in one bed:

then solitude flows with the rivers... 

  

                                                  #

the original text in German 

Einsamkeit

Die Einsamkeit ist wie ein Regen.
Sie steigt vom Meer den Abenden entgegen;
von Ebenen, die fern sind und entlegen,
geht sie zum Himmel, der sie immer hat.
Und erst vom Himmel fällt sie auf die Stadt.

Regnet hernieder in den Zwitterstunden,
wenn sich nach Morgen wenden alle Gassen
und wenn die Leiber, welche nichts gefunden,
enttäuscht und traurig von einander lassen;
und wenn die Menschen, die einander hassen,
in einem Bett zusammen schlafen müssen:

dann geht die Einsamkeit mit den Flüssen...

Rainer Maria Rilke, 21.9.1902, Paris

The Wait / Rainer Maria Rilke

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


Rainer Maria Rilke

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough / Rainer Maria Rilke

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small
enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.

I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
never be blind or too old
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;
for there I would be dishonest, untrue.
I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everday jug,
like my mother's face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm.