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More poems by Rainer Maria RilkeRainer Maria Rilke | Print this page.Print | Order a PoetryNotes Analysis of this poem.Analysis | View and Write CommentsComments

The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: XXIII

Rainer Maria Rilke

Call to me to the one among your moments
that stands against you, ineluctably:
intimate as a dog's imploring glance
but, again, forever, turned away

when you think you've captured it at last.
What seems so far from you is most your own.
We are already free, and were dismissed
where we thought we soon would be at home.

Anxious, we keep longing for a foothold-
we, at times too young for what is old
and too old for what has never been;

doing justice only where we praise,
because we are the branch, the iron blade,
and sweet danger, ripening from within.


Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Added: 2 Mar 2002 | Last Read: 21 Aug 2008 3:11 AM | Viewed: 1916 times

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URL: http://plagiarist.com/poetry/3299/ | Viewed on 21 August 2008.
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