Call on me to help you in the hour
that unceasingly opposes you,
close as the faces of imploring dogs,
yet continually turned away
when you think that at last you're grasping it.
What's withdrawn like this: most wholly yours.
We are free, for we are turned away
where we thought that we had just been welcomed.
Anxiously we long for footholds,
we who are too young for what is old,
and too old for things that never were.
We do justice only where we praise.
For we are ourselves branch and iron;
we, ourselves, are ripening danger's fruit.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Sonnets to Orpheus
trans. Christianne Marks
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