Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XII



Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.

Pour yourself out like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming
a laurel, dares you to become the wind.


~Rainer Maria Rilke
(In Praise of Mortality,
translated and edited by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)


Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Sonnets_to_Orpheus_II_XII.html