Rilke - Sonnets To Orpheus 11 Poem by Michael Maxwell Steer

The mystery at the heart of time:
Why now, on the sleeping hill,
falls the castle - or this heart of mine
besieged by a stormier will?

The vulnerablity of childhood
is the source of later joy,
the heart a fountain of wild blood
dancing unpredictably.

Among us transient spectres pass,
clouding our lives like smoky glass -
we are both viewers and the viewed:

beyond the pane we sometimes glimpse,
seeing the mighty gods as pimps
and we their wretched livelihood.


alternatively
Among us transient spectres pass,
clouding our lives like smoking grass -
to some we're monarchs, some we're chattels:
beyond the haze we sometimes see
-sometimes at sword-point, sometimes free-
our value to the gods as cattle.


A free version of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus Bk11 (2.27)
Gibt es wirklich die Zeit, die zerstörende?

To hear my setting of these words visit soundcloud.com/mmsteer/ search
sonnets-to-orpheus-rilke