Round

In the dark times

will there also be singing?

Yes, there will also be singing

about the dark times.

--Bertolt Brecht

 

Source/Notes: Motto to the 'Svendborg Poems' [Motto der 'Svendborger Gedichte'] (1938), trans. John Willett in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 320 - Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

I return today to this project, to this threshold, to this passage, to this vein, to this lagoon,

to begin, again, to offer only this, to end the silence of a year.

R.T.

 

 

Maybe I am Traveling (from The Book of Hours)

 

Maybe I am traveling, like some secret ore,

through the hard veins of a mountain, alone.

and no distance: nothing but a single core

that draws in all things and changes them to stone.

 

I don't have much wisdom about sorrow.

The vast darkness has made me smaller, it's true.

Are you the one solid enough? Come break through,

so that all of your touch might happen to me,

and all of my tears might happen to you.

 

Rainer Maria Rilke

 

Translated from German by Paul Weinfield, © 2014

See more translations from Paul Weinfield at his website, HERE.