A review by ctgt
Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke

4.0

  With all its eyes the natural world looks out
     into the Open. Only our eyes are turned
     backward, and surround plant, animal, child
     like traps, as they emerge into their freedom.
     We know what is really out there only from
     the animal's gaze; for we take the very young
     child and force it around, so that it sees
     objects-not the Open, which is so
     deep in the animals' faces. Free from death.
     We, only, can see death; the free animal
     has its decline in back of it, forever,
     and God in front, and when it moves, it moves
     already in eternity, like the fountain.

                         -O Earth: invisible!
      What, if not transformation, is your urgent 
      command?
      Earth, my dearest, I will. Oh believe me, 
      you no longer
      need your springtimes to win me 
      over-one of them,
      ah, even one, is already too much 
      for my blood.
      Unspeakably I have belonged to you, from
      the first.

       All Things want to fly. Only we are 
       weighed down by desire,
       caught in ourselves and enthralled with
       our heaviness.
       Oh what consuming, negative teachers we are
       for them, while eternal childhood fills 
       them with grace.