A WALK
Already my eyes touch the sunlit hill,
far ahead of the road I have just begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
we see its light, even from a distance-and it changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are;
a gesture seems to wave us on, answering our own wave…
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
REMEMBERING
And you wait. You wait for the one thing
that will change your life,
make it more than it is—
something wonderful, exceptional,
stones awakening, depths opening to you.
In the dusky bookstalls
old books glimmer gold and brown.
You think of lands you journeyed through,
of paintings and a dress once worn
by a woman you never found again.
And suddenly you know: that was enough.
You rise and there appears before you
in all its longings and hesitations
the shape of what you lived.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
AUTUMN DAY
Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.
Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.
Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander on the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
Gladsome Lights 