Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

Rainer Maria Rilke

print this page

Since delight has winged you . . .

Since delight has winged you
over countless previous precipices,
engineer bold bridge now
whose arching defies geometries.

Not merely through endurance,
freak survival of great danger,
but in pure direct performance
is the wonderment of wonder.

It is no presumption to play a part
in the complex ceaseless weaving of
life’s patterning, ever more intricate –
to be carried along is not enough.

Let your practised skills outreach
until they join wide contraries,
for within the limits of human touch
the god discovers his mysteries.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was born in Prague, and lived for many years in France. Though he wrote some poems in French, his mother tongue and the language of all his major work was German. Well acquainted also with Russian and Scandinavian cultural circles, he has been considered to be the first “European” poet, but there is no doubt of his place in the German poetic tradition.

Tessa Ransford was born in India, and educated in Scotland, where she still lives. She has published ten books of poems since the mid-seventies; the most recent is When it works it feels like Play (Ramsay Press, Edinburgh). She founded and directed the Scottish Poetry Library (1984-99), founded and organised the School of Poets poetry workshop (1981-99), and edited Lines Review poetry magazine from 1988 until its final issue in 1998. She is now a roving poetry practitioner and adviser (contact her on [email protected]) with a particular interest in dialogue between poetry and the other creative arts.

The first two poems here were included in The Patched Fool, a Morning Star folio printed and published by Alec Finlay (limited edition, 250 copies, March 1991).

Translated by Tessa Ransford

Page(s) 38

Back to top