CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

I. PROLOGUE

II. LETTERS ON LOVE

Introducion

Rilke’s Letters on Love

III. POEMS ON LOVE

Introduction

Rilke’s Poems on Love

The Seven Phallic Poems

I “The rose-gatherer grasps suddenly” II “Summer, which you
so suddenly are”
III “We close a circle” IV “You don’t know
towers”
V “How the too ample space”

VI “To what are we near?” VII “How I called you”

Other Love Poems

“Greek Love-Talk” “The Lovers” “You declare you know
love’s nights?”
“… …‥ these soft”

“Are not the nights fashioned from the sorrowful”

“What fields are fragrant as your hands?” “Also”

“Woman’s Lament I” “Woman’s Lament II” “This”

“Like the pigtails of quickly grown-up girls” “By the
sun-surrounded road”
“(Since I wrote you,
sap sprang free”

IV. POEMS ON OTHER DIFFICULTIES

Introduction

Rilke’s Poems on Other Difficulties

The Poet Speaks of Praising

“Oh speak, poet, what do you do?”

The Poet Praises

“Wait …, this tastes good”

The Poems Praise

Life and death: they are one” “Play the deaths, the single
ones, quickly”
“.…Transformation” “Strong star,
which needs not the help”
“Being-silent. Who keeps innerly”
“Transform” “Gods perhaps are still striding along”
“We are not to know why” “Cheerful gift from the chillier”
“Everything” “Magic” “After such long experience let
‘house’”
“That which offers itself to us with starlight”
“The quinces” “From the Cycle: Nights” “Force of
Gravity”
“Mausoleum” “Somewhere blooms the
blossom of parting”
“More uncovered the land” “Give me,
oh earth, pure unmingling”
“Ah, not being sundered”
“The voices” “Now it would be time that gods should step
out”
“Gong” “If you’d attempt this, however”
“Music” “Do you also ponder” “and all” “Come
you, you last one, whom I avow”

V. BLOOD-REMEMBERING

VI. THE DRAGON-PRINCESS

VII. THE DIFFICULTY OF DYING:
RILKE’S SELF-COMPOSED EPITAPH

VIII. EPILOGUE

ALSO BY RAINER MARIA RILKE