— by Rainer Maria Rilke – from his Book of Pictures

How everything seems so far away

and long passed!

The star shining down on me just now

has probably been dead for millennia.

From the carriage that just drove by

I thought I heard something frightening:

“Has the clock in the house struck the hour?”

But in which house?

Then from my heart a desire to step out

beneath this starry expanse.

I wanted to pray.

To understand that one of these stars still existed.

And then I knew which one alone survived, it shone

like a white city standing at the end of heaven’s light.

*

—a new translation by j.petroshius