A tree ascended there. Oh pure transendence! <br />Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear! <br />And all things hushed. Yet even in that silence <br />a new beginning, beckoning, change appeared. <br /> <br />Creatures of stillness crowded from the bright <br />unbound forest, out of their lairs and nests; <br />and it was not from any dullness, not <br />from fear, that they were so quiet in themselves, <br /> <br />but from just listening. Bellow, roar, shriek <br />seemed small inside their hearts. And where there had been <br />at most a makeshift hut to receive the music, <br /> <br />a shelter nailed up out of their darkest longing, <br />with an entryway that shuddered in the wind- <br />you built a temple deep inside their hearing. <br /> <br /> <br />Translated by Stephen Mitchell<br /><br />Rainer Maria Rilke<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-sonnets-to-orpheus-i/
