For Valentine’s Day, from Sonnets to Orpheus, translated by M.D. Herter Norton.

from First Part, 1 / by Rainer Maria Rilke

There rose a tree. O pure transcendency!
O Orpheus singing! O tall tree in the ear!
And all was silent. Yet even in the silence
new beginning, beckoning, change went on.

Creatures of stillness thronged out of the clear
released wood from lair and nesting-place;
and it turned out that not from cunning and not
from fear were they so hushed within themselves,

but from harkening.

For the new landscape of the new year, and naturally, for this weekend’s playoffs, from Poems of Paul Celan, translated by Michael Hamburger.

from Draft of a Landscape / by Paul Celan

Lavas, basalts, glowing
stone from the world’s heart.
Wellspring tuff
where light grew for us, before
our breath.