Free The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke by Rainer Maria Rilke

moving with total confidence and a sweet
    exultant smile, she looks up finally
    and stamps it out with powerful small feet.
TOMBS OF THE HETAERAE
    They lie in their long hair, and the brown faces
    have long ago withdrawn into themselves.
    Eyes shut, as though before too great a distance.
    Skeletons, mouths, flowers. Inside the mouths,
    the shiny teeth like rows of pocket chessmen.
    And flowers, yellow pearls, slender bones,
    hands and tunics, woven cloth decaying
    over the shriveled heart. But there, beneath
    those rings, beneath the talismans and gems
    and precious stones like blue eyes (lovers’ keepsakes),
    there still remains the silent crypt of sex,
    filled to its vaulted roof with flower-petals.
    And yellow pearls again, unstrung and scattered,
    vessels of fired clay on which their own
    portraits once were painted, the green fragments
    of perfume jars that smelled like flowers, and images
    of little household gods upon their altars:
    courtesan-heavens with enraptured gods.
    Broken waistbands, scarabs carved in jade,
    small statues with enormous genitals,
    a laughing mouth, dancing-girls, runners,
    golden clasps that look like tiny bows
    for shooting bird- and beast-shaped amulets,
    ornamented knives and spoons, long needles,
    a roundish light-red potsherd upon which
    the stiff legs of a team of horses stand
    like the dark inscription above an entryway.
    And flowers again, pearls that have rolled apart,
    the shining flanks of a little gilded lyre;
    and in between the veils that fall like mist,
    as though it had crept out from the shoe’s chrysalis:
    the delicate pale butterfly of the ankle.
    And so they lie, filled to the brim with Things,
    expensive Things, jewels, toys, utensils,
    broken trinkets (how much fell into them!)
    and they darken as a river’s bottom darkens.
    For they
were
riverbeds once,
    and over them in brief, impetuous waves
    (each wanting to prolong itself, forever)
    the bodies of countless adolescents surged;
    and in them roared the currents of grown men.
    And sometimes boys would burst forth from the mountains
    of childhood, would descend in timid streams
    and play with what they found on the river’s bottom,
    until the steep slope gripped their consciousness:
    Then they filled, with clear, shallow water,
    the whole breadth of this broad canal, and set
    little whirlpools turning in the depths,
    and for the first time mirrored the green banks
    and distant calls of birds—, while in the sky
    the starry nights of another, sweeter country
    blossomed above them and would never close.
ORPHEUS. EURYDICE. HERMES
    That was the deep uncanny mine of souls.
    Like veins of silver ore, they silently
    moved through its massive darkness. Blood welled up
    among the roots, on its way to the world of men,
    and in the dark it looked as hard as stone.
    Nothing else was red.
    There were cliffs there,
    and forests made of mist. There were bridges
    spanning the void, and that great gray blind lake
    which hung above its distant bottom
    like the sky on a rainy day above a landscape.
    And through the gentle, unresisting meadows
    one pale path unrolled like a strip of cotton.
    Down this path they were coming.
    In front, the slender man in the blue cloak—
    mute, impatient, looking straight ahead.
    In large, greedy, unchewed bites his walk
    devoured the path; his hands hung at his sides,
    tight and heavy, out of the falling folds,
    no longer conscious of the delicate lyre
    which had grown into his left arm, like a slip
    of roses grafted onto an olive tree.
    His senses felt as though they were split in two:
    his sight would race ahead of him like a dog,
    stop, come back, then rushing off again
    would stand, impatient, at the path’s next turn,—
    but his hearing, like an odor, stayed behind.
    Sometimes it seemed to him as though it reached
    back to the footsteps of those other two
    who were to follow him, up the long path home.
    But then, once more, it was just his own steps’ echo,
    or the wind inside his cloak, that made