Two Untitled Rilke Poems (ok second one is a fragment of a larger one --mm)
We don’t know what we spend:
All that’s named is past and each being
Invents itself at the last second
And will hear nothing / Hint of signals,
One leaf barely turned; but by now we’ve changed,
We disavow, smile, already lack all sense
Of yesterday’s good fortune. And the goddess herself
Sways over us.
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We’re drawn away from gods toward rotting refuse,
For gods do not entice. They posses being
And only being, great stores of being,
But not scent, nor gesture. Nothing is so silent
As a god’s mouth. Serenely, like a swan
On its eternity of unplumbed surface:
The god glides and dives and saves his whiteness.