Picture/Poems: The Rilke Archive

Picture/Poems:
The Rilke Archive
biweekly presentations
of the poetry of
Rainer Maria Rilke

photography, commentary
and translations

by Cliff Crego

(41) October: Cotton
Grass and the Landscapes
of Enchantment

Sonnets to Orpheus [PART TWO] X and IV
O this is the creature that does not exist.

(40) September:
Mountain Fall Inital and Autumn
The leaves are falling, falling as if from afar,
as if withered in the distant gardens of heaven;
with nay-saying gestures they fall.

(39) September: Clear
Water Sonnets to Orpheus XVa[PART TWO]
O fountain mouth, giver, you mouth which
speaks inexhaustibly of that one, pure thing,—n

(38) August: Moving Up
into Mountain Time II Sonnets to Orpheus XXVIa[PART TWO]
and XIX {PART ONE]
Torn away from us again and again
is the god of the place which heals.

(37) August: Moving Up
into Mountain Time Sonnets to Orpheus XXVIIa[PART TWO]
and XIX {PART ONE]
Does Time the Destroyer really exist?
When, on the mountain, will it bring /
down the fortress?

(36) Julye: Moments
Out of Time Sonnets to Orpheus VIIIa[PART ONE]
and XXIII {PART TWO]
Call me to that one of your hours
that resists you without pause:

(35) July: The Rhythms
of Work in Poetry Sonnets to Orpheus Ia[PART ONE]
and XXV {PART TWO]
Already, listen, do you hear the work
of raking, again in the human rhythm
within the restrained silence of the strong
spring earth. ...

(34) June: Moments
Out of Time Entrance; Corpse Washing;
The Sisters; Before Summer Rain
...See how differently they carry and understand
upon themselves the same possibilities,
as if one were to see different eras
pass through two identical rooms....

(33) June: The View
to Infinity and Back [It's possible, I'm moving through
the hard veins]; [You, mountain, who
remained because the mountains came];
[My life is not this vertical hour];
The Solitary One

(32) June: Every Poem
a Prayer [I believe in everything not yet said];
Lamnet; Prayer
O How everything is so far away
and so long ago departed.

(31) May: Thye Poetry of
Coming and Going [I 'm too alone in the world, and yet not
alone enough];; Departure
How I've come to sense this thing /
called departure.

(30) April: Alder
Spring Archaic Torso of Apollo;
The Gazelle
Enchanted being: how can the harmony of two
chosen words ever achieve the rhyme,
as with a sign, that comes and goes in you.

(29) April: Willow
Spring Out of an April
...Then it is quiet. Even the rain goes more softly
over the stones' peacefully darkening shine.

(28) April: A Light too
Bright to Bear Early Apollo; Sonnet to Orpheus
XXI [FIRST PART]
As when sometimes through the still leafless
branches a morning appears that is already
wholly spring:

(27) March: The Time
in Stones Remembrance
And you wait, expecting that one thing
that your life endlessly shall multiply;
that one powerful, immense thing,

(26) March: The Music
in Things Anxiousness; Lament; To Music
Music: you stranger. Passion which
has outgrown us. Our inner most being,
transcending, driven out of us,—

(25) February: Images from
the Periphery of Time Eve; Death Experience
We know nothing of this going away, that
shares nothing with us...

(24) February: Mountain
Spring Love Song; At the Edge of Night;
A Woman in Love; Sonnets to Orpheus XII II
How shall I hold on to my soul, so that
it does not touch yours? How shall I gently
lift it up over you on to other things?

(23) February: After Storm,
New Snow—clearing The Mountain; Black Cat; A Woman
in Love; The Reader
Six and thirty times and hundred times
the painter tried to capture the mountain,
tore it up, then pushed on again
(six and thirty times and hundred times)

(22) January: Winter
Fountains [O beautiful sheen of the shy mirror image!];
[Inconstant scales of Life]; Palm of the Hand
Inconstant scales of Life,
always vacillating, how rarely
does a facile weight dare
announce itself to the soon vanishing
opposite load.

(21) January: Winter
Ribbons [Behind the innocent trees]; [And once I took
between my two hands your face]; A Walk
...O and the lovers soon-to-be
smile at each other, still departureless,
their destiny rising and falling
upon them like clusters of stars,

(20) December: Clear Water,
Smooth Granite and the Flow
of Compassion Solemn Hour; Title Page (from The Voices)
Whoever cries now somewhere in the world,
without reason cries in the world,
cries about me.

(19) November: More Figures
from Interior Space The Apple Orchard
Come just after the setting of the sun,
see the evening green of the grassy ground;
is it not as if we had for a long time
taken it into ourselves and saved it,

(18) November: Figures
from Interior Space Piano Practice;
A Woman going Blind
The drone of summer. /
The fatigue of afternoon;
she airs confusedly her new dress
and places in the thoughtful etude
all the anxious waiting for a world

(17) October: Fall Ice,
Mountain Spring Sonnets to Orpheus XXIX {SECOND PART]
(This is the last poem of the cycle)
Silent friend of many distances, feel
how your breath still multiplies all space.

(16) October: Fall Starlings
and a Poplar Tree
Sonnets to Orpheus XXIX {FIRST PART]
(This is the first poem of the cycle)
There rose a tree. O pure transcendence!
O Orpheus sings! O high tree of the ear.

(15) September: The Staghorn
Sumac and the Poetry
of Listening
Sonnets to Orpheus X [SECOND PART]
All achievement is threatened /
by the machine, as long
as it dares to take its place in the mind, /
instead of obeying.

(14) September: Fireweeds,
Machines and the Poetry
of Listening Sonnets to Orpheus XVIII {FIRST PART]
Do you hear the New, Lord,
rumbling and shaking?
Prophets are coming
who shall exalt it.

(13) August: The Gentian and
the Poetry of Light and Darkness Sonnets to Orpheus IX; XIV; XXII
[FIRST PART]
Everything is now at rest:
Darkness and light,
blossom and book.

(12) August: Water, Granite
and the Poetry of Change Sonnets to Orpheus XII [SECOND PART]
Desire transformation. O be aroused by the flame
wherein the one thing that eludes you in change /
shines forth;

(11) August: Children, Mountains
and the Poetry of Praise Sonnets to Orpheus XX [SECOND PART];
XXIV; XXII; XIX [FIRST PART]
Even when the world swiftly changes,
as the form of clouds,
all things completed fall
back into the Primordial.

(10) July: Lilies of Paradise
and the Poetry of Praise Sonnets to Orpheus VII; V; XII; III
[FIRST PART] Song, as you teach him, is not desire,
not the touting of some final achievement;
Song is Being. Easy for a god.
But when are we to be?

(9) June: Windflowers and
the Poetry of Praise Sonnets to Orpheus I; XIV; V [SECOND PART];
VIII [FIRST PART]
We, the violent ones, we last longer.
But when, in which of all lives,
are we finally open and receivers.

(8) June: The Poetry of
Images of Movement Initial; Autumn; At the Edgeof Night;
Merry-Go-Round
My room and these distances,
awake over the darkening land,—
are one. I am a string, / stretched over rushing
wide resonances.

(7) May: Sky Tracks—a
'Found-poem' Photo Before Summer Rain
All at once from the green of the park,
one can't quite say, something is taken away;

(6) May: Wonders in the
Form of a Flower Wild Rosebush; [Almond trees in flower]
Almond trees in flower: all that /
we can achieve is, with
nothing remaining, to recognize /
ourselves in earthly appearance.

(5) April: Mountains
of the Heart [Exposed on the mountains of the heart];
Complaint ...in the storm my slowly grown /
Tree of Joy is breaking.
Most beautiful thing in my invisible
landscape, you who made me more knowable
to angels, invisible ones.

(4) April: Tapoff, Mountain
Spring: Loneliness Loneliness
Loneliness is like a rain.
It rises from the sea to meet the evening;
from the plains, which are far and remote,
it ascends to the sky, which it ever holds.

(3) April: Alpine
Crocuses Out of an April
Then it is quiet. Even the rain goes more softly
over the stones' peacefully darkening shine.

(2) March: Black Locust against
a March Sky: XXI Sonnets
to Orpheus Sonnet to Orpheus XXI [FIRST PART]
..Strict was her teacher. The white
in the old man's beard pleases us.
Now, what to call green, to call blue,
we dare to ask: she knows, she knows!

(1) March: Winter Storm:
XIII Sonnets to Orpheus Sonnet to Orpheus XIII [SECOND PART]
...To that which used-up, as to nature's abundant
dumb and mute supply, the unsayable sums,
joyfully add yourself and the result destroy.

See also another website
by Cliff Crego:
The Poetry of
Rainer Maria Rilke

a presentation of 80 of the
best poems of Rilke in
both German and
new English translations:
biography, links, posters