Read Me a Poem

Amanda Holmes reads Rainer Maria Rilke’s “The Watcher,” translated from the German by Stephanie Bastek. Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.

This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.

The Watcher

by Rainer Maria Rilke

I see the storms coming in the trees

that on swollen, balmy days

beat at my anxious window,

and hear the Distance saying things

that I can’t bear without a friend,

can’t love without a sister.

There goes the storm, a rearranger,

goes through forest and through time,

and everything is as though ageless:

the landscape, like a verse in a psalm book,

is truth and might and eternity.

How small it is, what we wrestle with,

what wrestles with us, how great;

if we could let ourselves be more like things,

be subdued by great storms—

we would become vast and nameless.

What we defeat is the Small,

and the victory itself makes us small.

The Eternal and Enormous

will not be bent by us.

This is the Angel that appeared

to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:

when its adversary’s sinews

strained like metal in the struggle,

it felt them under its fingers

like the strings of deep melodies.

Whoever was bested by this Angel—

who so often renounced struggle—

he goes righteous and upright

and great from that harsh hand,

which embraced him like a sculptor.

Victories do not entice him.

This is how he grows: deep defeat

by ever greater forces.

Translated by Stephanie Bastek