Nicht-Gesicht/Not Face by Rainer Maria Rilke
From the German, translated by Priscilla Washburn Shaw:
Face, my face: whose are you; for what things are you face? How can you be face for such insides, whose something is beginning continually rolled together with dissolving? Has the forest a face? Does not the mountain basalt stand facelessly there? Does the sea not raise itself without face, up from the ocean-floor; is not the sky reflected within, without forehead, without mouth, without chin?
Do not animals come to us sometimes as if they were pleading: take my face. Their face is too heavy for them and because of it they hold their tiny little soul too far into life. And we, animals of the soul, confused by everything in us, not yet ready for nothing; we grazing souls: do we not implore the Allotter by night to grant us the not-face which belongs with our darkness-
poem by Warren Falcon
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