Ich glaube an Alles noch nie Gesagte

I belive in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for

may for once spring clear
without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,

streaming through widining channels
into the open sea.

Wir bauen an dir mit zitternden Händen

Our hands shake as we try to construct you,
block on block.
But you, cathedral we dimly perceive—
who can bring you to completion?

What's Rome? It crumbled.
What is the world? We are destroying it
before your towers can taper into spires,
before we can assemble your face
from the piles of mosaic.

Yet sometimes in dreams
I take in your whole expanse,
from its deepest beginnings
up to the rooftop's glittering ridge.

And then I see: it is my mind
that will fashion
and set the last pieces in place.
______________________________
Ranier Maria Rilke; Book of Hours; translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy; Riverhead Books, NY,1996; page 58 & 62.