Rainer Maria Rilke Poems

She sat just like the others at the table.
But on second glance, she seemed to hold her cup
a little differently as she picked it up.
She smiled once. It was almost painful.
...

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it all will your heart survive.
...

The future: time's excuse
to frighten us; too vast
a project, too large a morsel
for the heart's mouth.
...

Whom will you cry to, heart? More and more lonely,
your path struggles on through incomprehensible
mankind. All the more futile perhaps
for keeping to its direction,
...

Losing too is still ours; and even forgetting
still has a shape in the kindgdom of transformation.
When something's let go of, it circles; and though we are
rarely the center
...

You don't survive in me
because of memories;
nor are you mine because
of a lovely longing's strength.
...

Look how the same possibilities
unfold in their opposite demeanors,
as though one saw different ages
passing through two identical rooms.
...

Everything is far
and long gone by.
I think that the star
glittering above me
...

Suddenly she steps, wrapped into the wind,
brightly into brightness, as if singled out,
while now the room as though cut to fit
behind her fills the door
...

The rich and fortunate do well to keep silent,
for no one cares to know who and what they are.
But those in need must reveal themselves,
must say: I am blind,
...