Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke

We never knew his incorrigible head
where the apple eyes ripened.
But his torso still glows li...

My room and this distance,
awake upon the darkening land,
are one. I am a string
stretched a...

Oh the sight of a tall shedding tree:
to us it has grown to the limit of the sky
that breaks t...

Lord, it is time. Summer was very grand.
Now cast your shadow on the sundials,
and loose the ...

Behind the blameless trees
old fate slowly builds
her mute countenance.
Wrinkles grow there......

Breathing, you invisible poem!
The pure continuous interface
of my own being with space,
the...

Center of all centers, seed of seeds,
self-enclosed almond growing sweeter
all of this, to t...

Evening slowly changes into garments
held for it like a silhouette of old trees;
you watch: an...

O all these April dead,
whose cartloads of blackness are made to pass
through blinding glare: ...

I live my life in spreading rings
that encompass all things.
I might never reach the last one, ...

Just as on the last day the dead will tear themselves
from the earth’ s embrace, and the ...

She steps out suddenly, wrapped in the wind,
in plain sight, as if in relief,
while now the...

Night and the sound of distant transport as troop trains pulled out from the rail yard.
He looke...

His gaze has grown so weary from passing the bars,
that it can hold nothing else.
For him it&r...

Silent friend of the many distances,
feel how space expands as you breathe.
Let yourself ring ...