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Orchards: A Sequence of French Poems

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English, French (translation)

109 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1982

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About the author

Rainer Maria Rilke

1,917 books7,231 followers
A mystic lyricism and precise imagery often marked verse of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whose collections profoundly influenced 20th-century German literature and include The Book of Hours (1905) and The Duino Elegies (1923).

People consider him of the greatest 20th century users of the language.

His haunting images tend to focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety — themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.

His two most famous sequences include the Sonnets to Orpheus , and his most famous prose works include the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge .

He also wrote more than four hundred poems in French, dedicated to the canton of Valais in Switzerland, his homeland of choice.

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Profile Image for M.W.P.M..
1,679 reviews30 followers
January 17, 2022
1

Tonight my heart makes
angels sing, remembering. . . .
Lured by too much silence,
some voice, barely mine,

rises and decides
never to return;
tender and intrepid,
what will it unite with?



2

Night light, my calm confidante,
my heart's not unveiled by you;
(we might lose ourselves); but the slope
of its South side is softly lit.

It's still you, O student lamp,
who wants the reader, now and then,
to stop and be distracted at his desk
as he stares at you, astounded.

(And your simplicity supplants and Angel.)



3

Stay still, if the Angel
suddenly chooses your table;
gently smooth those few wrinkles
in the cloth beneath your bread.

Then offer him your own rough food
so he can have his turn to taste,
so he can raise to that pure lip
a simple, common glass.



4

How many strange secrets
have we told the flowers
so that delicate balance
can tell us passion's weight.

All stars are confounded
when mingled with our grief.
From the frailest to the strong,
not one can still support

our ever-changing moods,
our revolts, our cries -
except the tireless table
and the bed (unconscious table).



5

Everything happens a little
as if we reproached the apple
for being good to eat.
But there are other risks:

to leave it on the tree,
to sculpt it out of marble,
and the last, the worst:
to wish that it were wax.



6

No one knows how mastered we are
by what the Invisible refuses
when, to the invisible ruse,
our life concedes, invisibly.

Slowly, at the will of fascinations,
our centre starts to shift
so, in turn, the heart can yield:
it, at last, Grand-Master of absences.



7. PALM

Palm, soft unmade bed,
where sleeping stars left
wrinkles as they rose
up towards the sky.

Was this bed such
that they rested,
clear and incandescent,
among the friendly stars
in their eternal swirl?

Oh, the two beds of my hands,
abandoned and cold,
light with the absent load
of those brazen stars.



8

Our next-to-last word will be one
that is full of misery,
but, facing mother-conscience,
the very last one will be lovely.

Because we'll have to summon
every ounce of some desire
that no taste of bitterness
will know how to hinder.



9

If we sing a god, that god
offers us his silence.
None of us advances
bu towards a silent god.

This imperceptible exchange
that makes us shiver
becomes an angel's heritage
we can never own.



10

The Centaur has good reason:
it leaps across the seasons
of a barely started world
that with its power it fulfilled.

Only the Hermaphrodite
is complete in its plight.
We search against the odds
for the lost half of these half-gods.



11. CORNUCOPIA

O lovely horn, from where are you
curved towards our waiting?
No more than the leaning
of a calyx, pour yourself out!

Flowers, flowers, flowers,
that while falling make a bed
for the springing fullness
of so many finished fruit!

And all that endlessly
leaps out and attacks us
to punish the deficiency
of our heart already full.

O too-huge horn, what miracle
gives itself through you!
O hunting horn that rings
all things with heaven's breath!



12

As Venetian glass,
becoming, knows this gray
and cloudy brightness
will be its enchantment,

so your tender hands
had dreamed in advance
of being the slow balance
of our overflowing moments.



13. IVORY FRAGMENT

Sweet shepherd tenderly
surviving in your role
with a sheep's shards
across your shoulder.
Sweet shepherd surviving
your shepherd's role
in a yellow ivory.
Your flock is lost
as much as you last
in the slow melancholy
of your staring face
that resumes in infinity
the living pasture's truce.



14. SUMMER PASSER-BY

Do you see that slowly waling, happy
girl coming down the road, the one we envy?
At some turn in the road she ought to be
greeted by handsome men of days gone by.

Under her parasol, with passive grace,
she exploits the tender alternative:
disappearing briefly in the blinding light,
she gathers the shade of her incandescence.



15

The whole night rests
upon a lover's sigh,
a brief caress
crosses the dazzled sky.

As if in the universe
an elemental power
again became the mother
of all love being lost.



16

Little porcelain angel,
if they should take stock of you,
when the season reached its peak
we crowned you with a raspberry.

Capping you with that
red bonnet seemed so futile,
but since then all else trembles
except your tender coronet.

It is withered, bu endures,
sometimes seeming to embalm;
crowned with such a phantom,
your little brow remembers.

[...]

29. THE ORCHARD

I
If I dared to write you, borrowed
tongue, perhaps it was to use
this rustic name whose rare kingdom
always has tormented me: Orchard.

Poor poet, who must select
to day all that you name implies,
a vague approximate capsized,
or worse: a fence that protects.

Orchard: oh lye's privilege
to be able just to name you simply;
unequaled name attracting bees,
name that waits and breathes. . . .

Bright name hiding antique spring,
as much transparent as it's full,
which in its symmetry of syllables
becomes abundant by redoubling all.

II
Toward what sun do so many
heavy longings gravitate?
Where is the firmament
of this ardor you profess?

Just to please each other
must we lean so much?
Let us be light and lighter
on this earth that's moves
by such contrary powers.

Look closely at the orchard:
inevitable, it's heavy;
yet with the same malaise
it makes the summer happy.

III
Never is the earth more real
than in your branches, O blonde
orchard, not more floating than
in your shade's lace on the lawn.

There, what is left for us,
what is heavy and what feeds
meets the manifest passage
of infinite tenderness.

But in your centre, the calm fountain,
almost sleeping n her ancient round,
barely mentions contradictions,
since in her they're so well blended.

IV
What do they do with their wiles,
all these gods now out of usage
that a rustic past engages
to be wise and puerile?

As if veiled by the sound
of looting insects,
they make the fruit get round
(a divine occupation).

For none ever self-destructs,
no mater how abandoned,
and those who menace us
are gods now unemployed.

V
Do I have memories, do I have any hopes
when I look at you, my orchard?
You feed yourself around me, O flock of abundance,
and you make you shepherd think.

Though your branches let me contemplate
the night about to start.
You have worked; for me it was a Sunday -
did my rest do me any good?

What could be better than to be a shepherd?
Can it be that part of my peace
today had softly entered in your apples?
For you well know that I am leaving. . . .

VI
This orchard, all of it, wasn't it
bright clothes around your shoulders?
And didn't you feel how much its soft
grass, that bent under foot, consoles?

How often, instead of parading,
it was impressive just by becoming great;
it was the orchard and evasive hour
that passed by your hesitant being.

Sometimes a book was with you. . . .
But, haunted by concurrences, your gaze
chased a changing game of slow resemblances
in the mirror of the shade.

VII
Happy orchard, stretched out to perfect
the countless plans of all your fruit,
and who well knows your daily instinct
bending toward an instant's youth.

What handsome work, what order is like yours!
So insistent in the twisted limbs,
bu finally, enchanted by their power,
soars into an aerial calm.

Your dangers and my own, are they not
related, O orchard, O my brother?
The same wind, coming from afar,
forces us to be austere and tender.

[...]
Profile Image for Sam.
354 reviews6 followers
July 5, 2025
“Tonight my heart makes
angels sing, remembering....
Lured by too much silence,
some voice, barely mine,

rises and decides
never to return;
tender and intrepid,
what will it unite with?”

“Stay still, if the Angel
suddenly chooses your table;
gently smooth those few wrinkles
in the cloth beneath your bread…

Then offer him your own rough food
so he can have his turn to taste,
so he can raise to that pure lip
a simple, common glass.”

“No one knows how mastered we are
by what the Invisible refuses
when, to the invisible ruse,
our life concedes, invisibly.

Slowly, at the will of fascinations,
our center starts to shift
so, in turn, the heart can yield:
it, at last, Grand-Master of absences.”

“Palm, soft unmade bed,
where sleeping stars left
wrinkles as they rose
up towards the sky.

Was this bed such
that they are rested,
clear and incandescent,
among the friendly stars
in their eternal swirl?

Oh, the two beds of my hands,
abandoned and cold,
light with the absent load
of those brazen stars.”

“If we sing a god, that god
offers us his silence.
None of us advances
but towards a silent god.

This imperceptible exchange
that makes us shiver
becomes an angel's heritage
we can never own.”

“Justice doesn't hold the accurate scale;
it's you, O god of undivided envy,
who weighs our faults
and from two murdered and ground hearts
makes one huge heart, bigger than nature,
that would still want

to grow... You, haughty and indifferent,
who humiliates the mouth and exalts the word
towards an ignorant heaven....
You, who mutilates beings while adding them
to the ultimate absence they're fragments of.”

“Have the angels turned discreet!
Mine hardly questions me.
Let me offer him at least
the glow of Limoges glaze.

And let my reds, my greens, my blues
make his round eye rejoice.
If he finds them earthy, good!
—for a paradise of premises.”

“It's that we must consent
to all extremes of power;
audacity's our problem,
despite the grand repentance.

And so, it often happens,
what we affront will change:
the calm turns into hurricane,
the abyss into an angel's mold.

We musn't dread that curve.
The Organs have to boom
for the music to abound
with all the notes of Love.”

“We've forgotten so well
challenged gods and their rites,
that we envy faithful souls
their simple way of life.

It's not that we must please
nor that we must convert,
if we know to obey
the complementary orders.”

“I want just one lesson, and it's yours,
fountain falling back into yourself—
that of risked waters on which depends
this celestial return towards earthly life.

Nothing will serve as example
as much as your multiple murmur:
you, O light column of a temple
that destroys itself by nature.

In your fall, how each jet of water
modulates itself as it ends its dance.
I feel like such a student, imitator
of your innumerable nuance.

But what's more convincing than your singing
is that instant of ecstatic silence when
at night, drawn back by a breath, your own
return passes through your liquid leaping.”

“In the empty sleeping noon,
how often she will pass
and not leave the slightest hint
of a body on the terrace.

But if nature senses her,
the habit of invisible power
renders a terrible clarity
to her soft visible contour.”

“You don't survive in me
because of memories;
nor are you mine because
of a lovely longing's strength.

What does make you present
is the ardent detour
that a slow tenderness
traces in my blood.

I do not need
to see you appear;
being born sufficed for me
to lose you a little less.”

“The sublime is a departure.
Instead of following, something
in us starts going its own way
and getting used to heavens.

Isn't art's extreme encounter
the tenderest farewell?
And music: that last glance
that we ourselves throw back at us!”

“The Angels' view: perhaps the tips of trees
are roots that drink the skies;
and in the earth the beech's deepest
roots look like silent summits.

For them, is not the earth transparent
against a sky full as a corpse?
This ardent earth where, near the springs,
the dead's oblivion laments.”

“O my friends, all of you, I renounce
none of you: not even that transient
who, from the inconceivable life, was
no more than a soft glance, open and hesitant.

How often, with an eye or gesture,
someone, despite himself, stops
the imperceptible flight of another
by paying attention to him a moment.

Strangers. They play large parts
in our fate that every day completes.
O discreet stranger, take good aim,
as you lift your gaze towards my distracted heart.”

“Tonight there was something in the air
that makes us bow our heads;
we want to pray for prisoners
for whom life stops.
And we think of life stopped....

Of life no longer moving towards death
and of where the future's absent;
where one must be uselessly strong
and sad, uselessly.

Where all days are marking time,
where all nights fall into the abyss,
and where childhood's intimate awareness
effaces itself at that point

when our heart's too old to think a child.
It's not so much that life is hostile,
but that we lie to it,
locked in a block of immobilized fate.”

“Tender and ineffable,
what good would sweetness be
if it were never able
to frighten all of us?

It surpasses
violence so,
that when it springs
no one defends himself.”

“In the animal eye I saw
a peaceable life that endures,
the unprejudiced calm
of dispassionate nature.

A beast knows what fear is
but keeps going nonetheless;
and in its field of plenty
a certain presence grazes
with no taste for someplace else.”

“Savoring sleep, the figure
of a woman seems to taste
a noise that's like no other
and that fills her up again.

From the echo of her sleeping
body, she draws the pleasure
of still being just a murmur
beneath the glance of silence.”
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews