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
Read More
20
November
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 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
Read More
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
Read More
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
Read More
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...
By Rilke
Read More
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
Read More
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...
By Rilke
Read More
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
Read More
13
July