Rilke: Breath, you invisible poem!

Thank you to M. for reminding me of this from the best of Poets

http://www.knudodde.dk/pa_rainermaria_rilke.html

Sonnets To Orpheus II, 1
by R. M. Rilke
translated by H. Landman

Breath, you invisible poem! Pure
continual exchange of our existence
for the world's extent. Counterbalance,
wherein I rhythmically recur.
Solitary wave,
whose ocean I become by degrees;
you sparsest of all possible seas -
what space you save!


How many of these spots of spaces
were inside me already! Many
a wind is like a son to me.


Do you recognize me, air, you so full of my former places?
You, smooth bark that girds,
roundness and leaf of my words.


(In the German)
Atmen, du unsichtbares Gedicht!
Immerfort um das eigne
Sein rein eingetauschter Weltraum. Gegenwicht,
in dem ich mich rhythmisch ereigne.

Einzige Welle, deren
allmähliches Meer ich bin;
sparsamstes du von allen möglichen Meeren, -
Raumgewinn.

Wie viele von diesen Stellen der Räume waren schon
innen in mir. Manche Winde
sind wie mein sohn.

Erkennst du mich, Luft, du, voll noch einst meiniger Orte?
Du, einmal glatte Rinde,
Rundung und Blatt meiner Worte.

*See here for the whole book in Pdf 

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And while we're on Rilke, some  favourite lines

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?
and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.
from the first Elegy (Duino Elegies). 


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II.4

Oh, this is the animal that never was. 
They did not know it and, for all that, 
they loved his transformations, his bearing, and his gait 
that into the tranquil gaze of light, he lived. 


Really it was not. Of their love they made it, 
this pure creature. And they always saved a space 
And in this place, clear and hollow, 
lightly he raised his head and scarcely needed 


to be. They did not feed him any corn, 
only the possibility that he might 
exist, which gave the beast such strength, he bore 


a horn upon his forehead. Just one horn. 
Unto a virgin he appeared, all white, 
and was in the silver mirror and in her.

(Sonnets To Orpheus)

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The Departure of the Prodigal Son (New poems)

To go forth now

from all the entanglement

that is ours and yet not ours,

that, like the water in an old well,

reflects us in fragments, distorts what we are.

From all that clings like burrs and brambles—

to go forth

and see for once, close up, afresh,

what we had ceased to see—

so familiar it had become.

To glimpse how vast and how impersonal

is the suffering that filled your childhood.

Yes, to go forth, hand pulling away from hand.

Go forth to what? To uncertainty,

to a country with no connections to us

and indifferent to the dramas of our life.

What drives you to go forth? Impatience, instinct,

a dark need, the incapacity to understand.

To bow to all this.

To let go—

even if you have to die alone.

Is this the start of a new life?