Rainer Maria Rilke – Three Summer Poems
Before Summer Rain – Along The Sun-Drenched Roadside – Slumber Song
May 19, 2009
Rainer Maria Rilke laid the groundwork for the 20th century Modernist poets, by creating works that transcended the more sterile view of the brave new world presented by Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot.
Rilke's use of pastoral imagery to express a certain spirituality, foreshadowed the postmodern works of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder.
Instilling a belief embraced by Beat poets and hippies alike, that the caricature of God as an old man with a long gray beard, looking down upon the natural world, was indeed dead; and buried; and this is where God is to be found, resurrected in the land and vegetation.
Before Summer Rain
Describing the coming rain, Rilke builds anticipation in the reader.
Suddenly, from all the green around you,
something-you don't know what-has disappeared;
you feel it creeping closer to the window,
The sound of nature, the weather's operatic voice, Rilke cleverly insinuates as a harbinger of the transformation of God, from a personal entity, to one of nature.
...reminding you of someone's Saint Jerome...
A fear and trembling ensues, as the changing weather sends a tremor through the walls, and an uncertainty through the one who waits.
...the chill, uncertain sunlight of those long
childhood hours when you were so afraid.
Along The Sun-Drenched Roadside
One of the most overtly sexual poems ever written by Rilke; as he further correlates man and nature; passionately evoking an intimate moment.
...from the great hollow half-treetrunk, which for generations
has been a trough, renewing in itself
an inch or two of rain, I satisfy
my thirst...
Almost, but never quite, crossing the line into parody, Rilke bravely forges ahead, and executes a nicely crafted piece of subtle sensuality.
Thus, if you came, I could be satisfied
to let my hand rest lightly, for a moment,
lightly, upon your shoulder or your breast.
Slumber Song
Slumber Song is as close to a pure love poem as anything Rainer Maria Rilke wrote.
...if I should ever lose you,
will you be able then to go to sleep
without me softly whispering above you
like night air stirring in the linden tree?
As a poet with an infinite talent for producing free-flowing verse; never contrived or insincere; here Rilke utilizes his wellspring of empathetic language to paint a picture of a lover incomplete.
Beautifully placing flowers into the season's broken-hearted garden, with existing names, poetic all on their own.
Without my touching you and leaving you...
...like a summer garden
that is overflowing with masses
of melissa and star-anise?
Read Before Summer Rain, Along The Sun-Drenched Roadside, Slumber Song, in their entirety, as well as other works, at the Maria Rainer Rilke page at FamousPoetsandPoems.Com
Also, for another review of Rilke: Four Poems on The Self
 |
