POEM OF THE DAY -- The Island (I) by Rainer Maria Rilke

eNothing returns with a small series of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke -- The Island (I), The Island (II), and The Island (III). Spiritual and introspective, exploring loneliness and isolationism...the essence of the poet. Rilke's writing style invokes deep emotion, and like the great Pablo Neruda, this deep emotion translates well into english poetry, contributing to their success outside their native language.

The inspiration for this series comes from a wonderful blog we've stumbled upon "A Year With Rilke" - which draws it's inpiration from the book with the same name - and is a wonderful daily excerpt of Rilke writings. Follow them too! The comments alone bring deep thought and incitement...

The Island (I)

By Rainer Maria Rilke

The tide erases the path through the mud flats
and makes things on all sides look the same.
But the little island out there has closed its eyes.
The dike around it walls its people in.

They are as if born into a sleep
that silently blurs all destinations.
They seldom speak,
and every utterance is like an epitaph

for something cast ashore, some foreign object
that comes unexplained, and just stays.
So is everything their gaze encounters from childhood on:

not intended for them, random, unwieldy,
sent from somewhere else
to underscore their loneliness.

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