Unwissend vor dem Himmel meines Lebens, Anstaunend steh ich. O die groBen Sterne, Aufgehendes und Niederstieg. Wie still. Als war ich nicht. Nehm ich denn Teil? Entriet ich Dem reinen EinfluB? Wechselt Flut und Ebbe in meinem Blut nach dieser Ordnung? Abtun will ich die Wunsche, jeden andern AnschluB, mein Herz gewohnen an sein Fernstes. Besser es lebt im Schrecken seiner Sterne, als zum Schein beschutzt, von einer Nah beschwichtigt.
Ignorant before the sky of my life, I stand in amazement. O the great stars, rising and setting. How still. As if I were not. Am I a participant? Have I escaped the pure influence? Does the tide change in my blood according to this order? I will cast off desires, every other connection, accustom my heart to its most distant place. Better it lives in the terror of its stars than protected in appearance, appeased by nearness.
Paris, early 1913
Hebend die Blicke vom Buch, von den nahen zahlbaren Zeilen, in die vollendete Nacht hinaus: O wie sich sternegemaB die gedgrangten Gefuhle vertellen, so als bande man auf einen BauernstrauB:
Jugend der leichten und neigendes Schwanken der schweren und der zartlichen zogernder Bug--, Uberall Lust zu Bezu und nirgends Begehren; Welt zu viel und Erde genug.
Raising my eyes from the book, from the countable lines, nearby, out into the perfect night: Oh, how the oppressed feelings are arranged according to the stars, as if one were tying a bouquet of a peasant's wildflowers:
Youth of light and the sway of the heavy bending and the tender, hesitant bow— Everywhere the desire for connection and nowhere desire; too much world and earth enough.
Paris, February 1914
. . . Wann wird, wann wird, wann wird es genugen das Klagen und Sagen? Waren nicht Meister im Fugen menschlicher Worte gekommen? Warum die neuen Versuche?
Sind nicht, sind nicht, sind night vom Buche die Menschen geschlagen wie von fortwahrender Glocke? Wenn dir, zwischen zwei Buchern, schweigender Himmel erscheint: frohlocke . . . oder ein Ausschnitt einfacher Erde im Abend.
Mehr als die Sturme, mehr als die Meere haben die Menschen geschrieen . . . Welche Uberewichte von Stille mussen im Weltraum wohnen, da uns die Grille horbar blieb, uns schreienden Menschen. Da uns die Sterne schweigende scheinen, im angesschrieenen Ather!
Redeten uns die fernsten, die alten und altesten Vater! Und wir: Horende endlich! Die ersten horenden Menschen.
. . . When will, when will, when will it be enough to complain and say? Haven't the masters in the joining of human words come? Why these new attempts?
Aren't, aren't, aren't people struck by the book as if by a perpetual carillon of bells? When, between two books, a silent sky appears to you: rejoice . . . or a strip of simple earth in the evening.
More than the storms, more than the seas, people have cried . . . What preponderance of silence must dwell in deep space, since the cricket remained audible to us, for all our screaming. Since the stars shine silently in the screamed firmament!
The most distant, the ancient and most venerable fathers spoke to us! And we: listeners at last! The first listening humans.
Muzot, February 1. 1922
Translator’s Note: Rilke copied out a selection of unpublished poems for Katharina Kippenberg in June 1926. This particular poem bore the dedication “from M’s belongings”, with the accompanying postscript: “Written the evening before the Orpheus sonnets.”
Widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) was unique in his efforts to expand the realm of poetry through new uses of syntax and imagery, and by an aesthetic philosophy that rejected Christian precepts and sought to reconcile beauty and harmony with suffering, life, and death.
Wally Swist’s new books include Aperture (Kelsay Books), poems regarding caregiving his spouse through Alzheimer’s, and If You’re the Dreamer, I’m the Dream: Selected Translations from Rilke’s Book of Hours (Finishing Line Press). Poems, essays, and translations have appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review, Commonweal, Healing Muse, La Piccioletta Barca, Montreal Review, North American Review, Pensive, Poetry London, Rattle, Upstreet and Your Impossible Voice. Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012) was selected by Yuseff Komunyakaa as co-winner of the 2011 Crab Orchard Open Poetry Competition. He was also the winner of the Ex Ophidia Press Poetry Prize in 2018 for A Bird Who Seems to Know Me. Books of nonfiction include Singing for Nothing: Selected Nonfiction as Literary Memoir (Brooklyn, NY: The Operating System, 2018) and On Beauty: Essays, Reviews, Fiction, and Plays (New York & Lisbon: Adelaide Books, 2018). Wild Rose Bush: The Life of Mary and Other Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke was selected as an honorable mention in the 2025 Stephen Mitchell Prize for Excellence in Translation sponsored by Green Linden Press. Bainbridge Island Press will be publishing the most recent collection of his poetry, Discovering What to Say.
