Remembering

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was an Austrian poet. I really thought I had shared some poems by him before, but a search through my blog posts showed that I had not. I realized I was confusing him with the English poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Remembering

By Rainer Maria Rilke

And you wait. You wait for the one thing
that will change your life,
make it more than it is—
something wonderful, exceptional,
stones awakening, depths opening to you.

In the dusky bookstalls
old books glimmer gold and brown.
You think of lands you journeyed through,
of paintings and a dress once worn
by a woman you never found again.

And suddenly you know: that was enough.
You rise and there appears before you
in all its longings and hesitations
the shape of what you lived.

"Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility." William Wordsworth

Poetry has been hugely important in my life my whole life. It is a part of every day for me. I will never tire of it, reading it, remembering favorite lines, finding new poems and new poem writers - and sharing it.