Rainer Maria Rilke
Rilke's poems are bittersweet and solemn. They haunt and cast night over the soul, yet nourish it in a dreamy romanticism. His words are like the delicate yet emotional tapped keys of Debussy's "Claire de Lune", which plays in my mind as I read his poems.
One thing I love about poetry: It's definitive, but doesn't define. It's no so much answers to life from one person's experiences, but their reflection on what makes something profound, alive, and rich to the senses. It just happens to be more special if others can be taken by the art.
To Be Said While Falling Asleep
I want to sing-in someone,
sit by someone and just be.
I want to rock you and sing you small
and accompany you sleep-in and sleep-out
I want to be the only one in the house,
who would know: the night was cold.
And I want to listen in and out
into you, the world, into the woods.
The chiming clocks call out to each other,
and you get at the bottom of time.
And down there walks a strange man
and disturbs a strange dog.
Beyond silence falls. Keenly
I have laid my eyes upon you;
and they are holding you gently and let you go,
when something moves in the dark.
Lonliness
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…
Autumn day
Lord, it is time; the summer has been grand.
On the sundials your shadow cast
and on the fields the winds be sent.
Command the last fruits to refine;
for two more southernly days they strive.
Urge them to completion and drive
the last sweetness into the heavy vine.
Whoever has no home now, will not build one anymore
Whoever is alone now, long alone will he remain.
Will wake, read, write long letters,
and through the avenues back and forth,
wander while the leaves are drifting.
One thing I love about poetry: It's definitive, but doesn't define. It's no so much answers to life from one person's experiences, but their reflection on what makes something profound, alive, and rich to the senses. It just happens to be more special if others can be taken by the art.
To Be Said While Falling Asleep
I want to sing-in someone,
sit by someone and just be.
I want to rock you and sing you small
and accompany you sleep-in and sleep-out
I want to be the only one in the house,
who would know: the night was cold.
And I want to listen in and out
into you, the world, into the woods.
The chiming clocks call out to each other,
and you get at the bottom of time.
And down there walks a strange man
and disturbs a strange dog.
Beyond silence falls. Keenly
I have laid my eyes upon you;
and they are holding you gently and let you go,
when something moves in the dark.
Lonliness
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…
Autumn day
Lord, it is time; the summer has been grand.
On the sundials your shadow cast
and on the fields the winds be sent.
Command the last fruits to refine;
for two more southernly days they strive.
Urge them to completion and drive
the last sweetness into the heavy vine.
Whoever has no home now, will not build one anymore
Whoever is alone now, long alone will he remain.
Will wake, read, write long letters,
and through the avenues back and forth,
wander while the leaves are drifting.