Thursday, January 14, 2010

The Solitary Man - Rainer Maria Rilke

No, what my heart will be is a tower,
and I will be right out on its rim:
nothing else will be there, only pain
and what can't be said, only the world.

Only one thing left in the enormous space
that will go dark and then light again,
only one final face full of longing,
exiled into what is always full of thirst,

only one fathest-out face made of stone,
at peace with its own inner wight,
which the distances, who go on ruining it,
force on to deeper holiness.

2 comments:

  1. I have not read that poem of Rilke's before. Do you know who the translator is? Or, its title in the original German?

    ReplyDelete
  2. The translator is Robert Bly and the original title is Der Einsame.
    The poem can be foung in the Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke with the original German text and the English Translation - Robert Bly.
    http://www.amazon.com/Selected-Poems-Rainer-Maria-Rilke/dp/0060907274

    ReplyDelete