rilke

• "Who, if I screamed out, would hear among the hierarchies of angels? [1st Elegy]
"But this, though: death, all of death, even before life has begun, to hold it all so gently and without rancor, this is beyond description." [4th Elegy]
"But death we alone can see; the free animal always has its demise behind it and God before, and when it walks it walks into eternity, like the flowing of a spring" [8th Elegy]
"for close to death, we stop seeing death, and stare beyond, perhaps with the vast gaze of animals. Lovers, if the other were not there, obstructing the view, come near to it and marvel..." [8th Elegy]
"But for the animal, its being is infinite, unfettered, unconcerned with its own condition, pure as its outward gaze. And where we see future, it sees everything, and itself is everything, foerver healed." [8th Elegy]
"Here all is seperation, there it was breath. After the first home, the second seems a hybrid place, wind-blown"
"O Bliss of the tiny creature who remains forever in the womb that bore it....for womb is all." [8th Elegy]
"Who has turned us around like this, so that whatever we do, we find ourselves in the attitude of someone going away? Just as that person on the last hill, which shows him his whole valley one last time, turns, stops, linger-, so we live, forever taking our leave." [8th Elegy]
"...then why do we have to be human-and avoiding destiny, long for destiny?...oh not because there is happiness, that rash profit taken just prior to the impending loss..." [9th elegy]
"...us, the most fleeting. Once for everything, only once. Once and no more. And we, too, only once. Never again. But to have been, this once, if only this once: to have been of the earth can never be taken back" [9th Elegy]
"...best of all, hold on to all of it forever...Ah, but into that other relation, what can we carry over? Not the power to see, learned here so slowly and none of the things that happened here. Not one. The pain, then. Above all the sadness, and the long experience of love-only what is unsayable." [9th Elegy]
"let me, one day, emerging from this grim vision, sing jubilation and praise to assenting angels." [10th Elegy]
"Let my streaming face make me more shining; let my simple tears flower. How dear will you be to me then, you nights of affliction." [10th Elegy]
"Children play, and couples hold each other, -off to the side, it gets more serious, on the patchy grass, and dogs do what is natural." [10th Elegy]