Chapter 5
Three poems by Rainer Maria Rilke for the 1903 collection. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Matt Paul-Rort. Three poems from the Book of Poverty and Death.
Her mouth is like the mouth of a fine bust, that cannot utter sound, nor breathe, nor kiss, but that had once from life received all this, which shaped its subtle curves, and ever must, from fullness of past knowledge well alone, a thing apart, a parable in stone. Two. Alone thou wanderest through space, profound one, with a hidden face.
Thou art poverty's great rose, the eternal metamorphos of gold into the light of sun. Thou art the mystic homeless one, into the world thou never came, too mighty thou, too great to name. Voice of the storm, song that the wild wind sings, thou harp that shatters those who play thy strings. Three.
Where they leap, the crags in their flight, and where at dusk and caverns hollow, they crooned music out the night. Send me far into thy barren land, where the snow clouds the wild wind drives, where monasteries like grey shrouds stand, aghast symbols of unlived lives. Their pilgrims climb slowly, one by one, and behind them a blind man goes.
With him I will walk, till day is done, up the pathway that no one knows. End of three poems from The Book of Poverty and Death by Rainer Maria Rilke. Translated by Jesse Lamont.
