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Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 –1926; translated from the German by Jessie Lamont
Oh! All things are long passed away and far.
A light is shining but the distant star
From which it still comes to me has been dead
A thousand years . . . In the dim phantom boat
That glided past some ghastly thing was said.
A clock just struck within some house remote.
Which house?—I long to still my beating heart.
Beneath the sky’s vast dome I long to pray . . .
Of all the stars there must be far away
A single star which still exists apart.
And I believe that I should know the one
Which has alone endured and which alone
Like a white City that all space commands
At the ray’s end in the high heaven stands.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on December 8, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
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