Friday, April 6, 2012

Autumn (Muzot, Autumn 1924)

O tall upreaching tree, shedding your leaves:
now it demands of you to be ready
for the immensity of open sky
breaking through your barren branches.

Laden with the summer's richness, you seemed
deep and dense with shadows, appearing to us
almost like a lofty and confiding head.
But now your branches are like many roads
that outline the heavens. And the heavens know us not.

A last resort: we can pretend like birds in flight
passing through this newly created openness,
but are denied the right to use this space
that only deals with worlds. Our senses
search like waves upon the shore for closeness
and have to be content to flutter like a flag
unfurled, placed in the open sky ---

But our hearts still ache for your lovely head's lost crown.

                                 - Rainer Maria Rilke

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