Rilke

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke — better known as Rainer Maria Rilke — was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language ... Wikipedia

Happiness

And we, who have always thought Of happiness as rising, would feel The emotions that almost overwhelms us Whenever a happy thing falls. Rilke...

By Rilke
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20 November

Somewhere to the East There’s a Church

Sometimes a man rises from the supper table and goes outside. And he keeps on going because somewhere to the east there’s a church. His children bless his name as if he were dead. Another man stays at home until he dies, stays with plates and glasses. So then it is...

By Rilke
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09 November

So We Live

Who turned us thus around, so we,
no matter what, have the pose
of one who is departing? As he who on
the last hill which still shows
his whole valley, will turn, halt, pause —
so we live, forever taking leave.

Rilke...

By Rilke
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13 October

The Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XXI

Want the change. Be inspired by the flame where everything shines as it disappears. The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much as the curve of the body as it turns away. What locks itself in sameness has congealed. Is it safer to be gray and numb? What turns hard becomes...

By Rilke
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06 September

Mohammed’s Summoning

for T.W. Power stepped into his hiding place: at once a presence he could not mistake. He begged the Angel—pure, erect, ablaze— to leave him as he was. He would forsake all his ambitions; it was best he stayed that baffled, over-traveled man of trade. He'd never learned his letters…and now such a...

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19 August

The Dark Hours of My Being

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...

By Rilke
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09 August

I’ll Go On…

Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you. Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you. And without feet I can make my way to you, without a mouth I can swear your name. Break off my arms, I'll take hold of you with my heart as with a hand. Stop...

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18 July

The Night

You, darkness, of whom I am born-- I love you more that the flame that limits the world to the circle it illuminates and excludes all the rest. But the dark embraces everything: shapes and shadows, creatures and me, people, nations--just as they are. It lets me imagine a great presence stirring beside me. I...

By Rilke
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13 July

Poems

…Poems amount to so little when you write them too early in your life. You ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness for a whole lifetime, and a long one if possible, and then, at the very end, you might perhaps be able to...

By Rilke
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01 July