Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)
Archaic Torso of Apollo
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) was an Austrian poet who from a very early age knew that his life was meant for literature, poetry, and writing. A frequent theme of Rilke’s poetry, Annemarie Kidder remarks, "is the human heart's insatiable longing for the transcendent, the divine," which expressed itself in religious proclivities that were decidedly unorthodox. This poem can be found in The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell (Vintage, 1989), p. 61.
Selected by Amy Frykholm: amy@journeywithjesus.net
