My life is not this steeply sloping hour - Rainier Maria Rilke

[Larry Robinson]


My life is not this steeply sloping hour,
In which you see me hurrying.
Much stands behind me; I stand before it like a tree;
I am only one of my many mouths,
And at that, the one that will be still the soonest.

I am the rest between two notes,
Which are somehow always in discord
Because Death's note wants to climb over --
But in the dark interval, reconciled,
They stay there trembling.
			And the song goes on, beautiful.

	- Rainier Maria Rilke 
	(Translation by Robert Bly)