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“But you now, dear girl …” by Rainer Maria Rilke 🇦🇹 (4 Dec 1875 – 29 Dec 1926)
Translated from the German by Stephen Mitchell
But you now, dear girl, whom I loved like a flower whose name
I didn’t know, you who so early were taken away:
I will once more call up your image and show it to them,
beautiful companion of the unsubduable cry.
​
Dancer whose body filled with your hesitant fate,
pausing, as though your young flesh had been cast in bronze;
grieving and listening—. Then, from the high dominions,
unearthly music fell into your altered heart.
​
Already possessed by shadows, with illness near,
your blood flowed darkly; yet, though for a moment suspicious,
it burst out into the natural pulses of spring.
​
Again and again interrupted by downfall and darkness,
earthly, it gleamed. Till, after a terrible pounding,
it entered the inconsolably open door.