"For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are able to endure.."
Rainer Maria Rilke is an intensely
poetic, beautiful man, who once bordered on being a classic
existentialist. He has said a great many things I like to keep in my pocket. Things like:
"...to childhood illnesses that began so strangely with so many profound and difficult transformations, to days in quiet restrained rooms and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to it is still not enough to be able to think of all that. You must have memories of many nights of love, each one different from all the others, memories of women screaming in labor, and of light, pale, sleeping girls who have just given birth and are closing again. But you must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open windows and the scattered noises. And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return."
He also wrote, what is as yet my favourite poem, and I am seldom able to appreciate much poetry; I find it verbose and quite frankly, all too much the same. But this poem, is exquisite; it is called You who never arrived.
There are also some lesser known poems, such as