From “A Year With Rilke”

On the Edge of Night

“My room and the vastness around it,

awake in the oncoming night,

are one. I am a string

stretched taut

across resonating distances.

 

All things are the body of the violin,

filled with murmuring darkness.

There, grieving women lie down to dream.

There the resentments of generations

surrender to sleep…

A silver thread,

I reverberate:

then all that’s underneath me

comes to life.

 

And what has lost its way

will, by my vibrant sounds,

be at last brought home

and allowed to fall endlessly

into the depthless source…” -Rilke