Night. O face against my face
dissolved into deepness.
You my marvelling look's most immense
preponderance.
Night, in my gaze a spasm,
in yourself made so fast;
inexhaustible genesis, outlasting
earthly remains;
full of young planets that hurl
fire from the flight of their seams
into the soundless adventure
of the space between:
by your mere existence, exceeder,
how shall I grow-;
but at one with the darkened earth
I dare be in you.
Rilke
(October 1924, from the unfinished sequence Nights)
an unofficial Rilke
translated by Michael Hamburger
Untitled 1991
by
Nicole Page-Smith
