The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: VI by Rainer Maria Rilke
Rose, you majesty-once, to the ancients, you were just a calyx with the simplest of rims. But for us, you are the full, the numberless flower, the inexhaustible countenance.
In your wealth you seem to be wearing gown upon gown upon a body of nothing but light; yet each seperate petal is at the same time the negation of all clothing and the refusal of it.
Your fragrance has been calling its sweetest names in our direction, for hundreds of years; suddenly it hangs in the air like fame.
Even so, we have never known what to call it; we guess... And memory is filled with it unawares which we prayed for from hours that belong to us.
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