2:18

Dancer: You are transference
of all that passes to passage. Oh, you presented it well.
And that final whirling, that tree made of motion,
didn't it fully possess the spiraling year? 

Wasn't its crown of stillness suddenly blooming,
the better to feel you, whirling about its leaves?
And above her, the warmth—wasn't it sun, wasn't it summer,
that countless warmth that was coming from you?

But it also bore fruit—yes, your tree of ecstasy bore.
For aren't these its tranquil fruits: the jug,
ripened in stripes, and the vase that is even riper?

And in the images: didn't the line remain
made by your eyebrow's dark stroke,
hastily scratched on the wall of your own winding turn?


Rainer Maria Rilke
Sonnets to Orpheus
trans. Christianne Marks