Friday Poetry

Friday poetry blogging is something I’ve always wanted to do. The problem is, I never realise it’s Friday until the following Tuesday or Wednesday. But since I am sitting in Starbuck’s working on my thesis while the rest of the world is out relaxing or getting wasted, I am painfully aware that it is indeed Friday.

And so a poem — one of my favorites by Rainer Maria Rilke. (The last two stanzas are amazing.)

WOMAN IN LOVE

That is my window. Just now
I have so softly wakened.
I thought that I would float.
How far does my life reach,
and where does the night begin

I could think that everything
was still me all around;
transparent like a crystal’s
depths, darkened, mute.

I could keep even the stars
within me; so immense
my heart seems to me; so willingly
it let him go again.

whom I began perhaps to love, perhaps to hold.
Like something strange, undreamt-of,
my fate now gazes at me.

For what, then, am I stretched out
beneath this endlessness,
exuding fragrance like a meadow,
swayed this way and that,

calling out and frightened
that someone will hear the call,
and destined to disappear
inside some other life.

Translated by Edward Snow