R. M. Rilke: Dance the Orange

A friend of mine had introduced me to Rilke's poetry. She even wrote a short story "Dance the Orange". Here are two of the Sonnets in Rilke's Sonnets To Orpheus.

Sonnets To Orpheus I, 15

by Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by H. Landman

Wait ... that taste ... it's already flown.
... just a little music, a stamping, a drone:
You warm maidens, you silent maidens,
dance the taste of fruit we experience!

Dance the orange. Who can forget it?
How, drowning in itself, it struggles to
deny its sweetness. You possess it.
It preciously converts itself to you.

Dance the orange. The warmer season
weave around you, so it ripely shines
in the air of its homeland! Radiant, reveal
fragrance after fragrance! Create the liaison
between the pure, forbidding rind,
and the juice, with which this happy fruit is filled!


Wartet ..., das schmeckt ... Schon ists auf der Flugt.
... Wenig Musik nur, ein Stampfen, ein Summen -:
Mädchen, ihr warmen, Mädchen, ihr stummen,
tanzt den Geschmack der erfahrten Frucht!

Tanzt die Orange. Wer kann sie vergessen,
wer sie, entrinkend in sich, sich wehrt
wider ihr Süßsein. Ihr habt sie besessen.
Sie hat sich köstlich zu euch bekehrt.

Tanzt die Orange. Die wärmere Landschaft,
werft sie aus euch, daß die reife erstrahle
in Lüften der Heimat! Erglühte, enthüllt
Düfte um düfte! Schafft die Verwandtschaft
mit der reinen, sich weigernden Schale,
mit dem Saft, der die glückliche füllt!

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Sonnets To Orpheus I, 16

by Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Robert Hunter

You, my friend, are lonely because. . .
humankind, to word and gesture prone,
gradually make the world our own -
we, perhaps, of all: most dangerous and full of flaws.

What gesture can indicate a smell?
Yet of the threatening powers benighted
you know many - you discern the dead;
cringe in terror at their magic spell.

See here, together we two must bear
these fragments and parts as though they were entire.
Helping you will be hard. You must never aspire

to plant me in your heart. I'd outgrow you, once inside.
But, guiding my own masters hand, I will declare:
There. This is Esau in his hide.