• Poetry,  Translation

    “Love Song” by Rainer Maria Rilke (Translated by David Shapiro)

    How could I stop myself
    from meeting you? Should I rise
    up over you to some other things?
    I could happily make a roof
    with someone abandoned in the dark
    in some dumb distant spot
    that never shakes, as you are trembling now.
    Yet everything that grazes you and me
    ties us together like a violin bow
    stroking two strings into one sound.
    But on what instrument have we been bound?
    And what musician has us in his hand?
    Oh sweet song.

    *

    Rainer Maria Rilke was a German-language poet and novelist,