April is National Poetry Month! Rainer Maria Rilke: "A God Can Do It"

Rainer Maria Rilke, "A God Can Do It."


A god can do it. But can a man expect
to penetrate the narrow lyre and follow?
His sense is discord. Temples for Apollo
are not found where two heart-ways intersect.

For song, as taught by you, is not desire,
not wooing of something finally attained;
song is existence. For the god unstrained.
But when shall we exist? And he require

the earth and heavens to exist for us?
It's more than being in love, boy, though your ringing
voice may have flung your dumb mouth open thus:

learn to forget those fleeting ecstasies.
Far other is the breath of real singing.
An aimless breath. A stirring in the God. A breeze.