Reflecting Rolke's Prose/Stories of God

Reflecting Rilke’s Prose/Stories of God

First the old man says:
Finding no rest in their beds
The men come out into the night
To gaze wordlessly, agape
At the silent, windless heavens

And then the beardless youth goes on:
Until, in the rising sun
Figures of men can be seen
Silhouetted against the flat distance
Atop the ridges of the kurgans

When a weary mother adds:
Within the kurgans lay cold
The fathers of forgotten fathers
Buried deep in earthen mounds
That ripple on the steppe like waves

To which a strong man responds:
Sometimes birds fly among the mounds
And wild songs drop deep inside
Where graves are the mountains
And men are the abysses

Now the child speaks his part:
Even their houses can’t protect
Them against the limitless steppe
For the dusty windows admit
The glaring light of eternity

A young maiden has this answer:
Only the icons succor them, as
Mileposts on the road to God
Glinting with flecks of gold they
Show His lost children the way

Based on a translation by M. D. Herter Norton