
Rainer Maria Rilke, from ‘Book of Hours: Love Poems to God’, tr. Anita Barrows & Joanna Macy

Rainer Maria Rilke, from ‘Book of Hours: Love Poems to God’, tr. Anita Barrows & Joanna Macy
It’s like autumn arriving. You expect nothing from its arrival. You expect everything.
summer is a slow plague.
I need you in some way that I can’t explain…
Dark angel divine.
What burns me now? Desire, desire, desire.
I am conscious of flux, of disorder; of annihilation and despair.
I, who came back from the depths laughing too loudly,
you saw the flame in the mouth, and heard the rushing of the demon,—the familiar,—and recognized the sound; for you have heard it in your own solitudes.

Jean Racine, from ‘Phaedra’, tr. Richard Wilbur