"Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading."
- Rainer Maria Rilke
Showing posts with label Rainer Maria Rilke. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rainer Maria Rilke. Show all posts
Sunday, August 3, 2014
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Archaic Torso of Apollo
- Rilke
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
Labels:
Archaic Torso of Apollo,
Poetry,
Rainer Maria Rilke
Monday, November 23, 2009
Quote For The Day
"For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions (one has emotions early enough)—they are experiences."
— Rainer Maria Rilke
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