National Poetry Month

My friend Nicky pointed out that this is National Poetry Month, so I thought I'd post one of my favorite poems. It's a bit long, so this is just the very first bit.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Duino Elegies

The First Elegy

Who, if I cried out, would hear me out of all the orders of angels?

And suppose even that someone would suddenly take my cry to heart:

I would die from his stronger Being. For Beauty is nothing

But the beginning of the horrifying, that we to some degree can bear,

And it amazes us so, since it stoically disdains

To destroy us. Each and every angel is horrifying.

And so I contain myself and suck in the siren call

Of lounging in dark sighs. Oh, who do we have the capacity to need?

Not angels. Not men.

And the resourceful animals already know,

That we are not entirely really at home

In the interpreted world. Perhaps there remains to us

Some tree on a slope, that we saw daily, over and over again;

We still have the street of yesterday

And the contorted loyalty of some custom,

That made us happy once, and so it remains, and does not leave.

O, and the night, the night, when the wind full of outer space

tore at our faces --, for whom does the night not remain,

The longed for, softly disappointing night, which stands with effort before each individual heart

Is it easier on lovers?

Oh, they use fate to hide from each other.

Do you still not know? Throw up the emptiness from your arms

Into the spaces that we breathe; perhaps that way birds

Will feel the expanded air with a more heartfelt flight.

(translated by myself)