From Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Edward Snow.
Sonnet 13
Ripe apple, blackberry and banana,
nectarine ... These all speak
death and life into the mouth ... I feel ...
Read it in the features of a child
who's tasting them. This comes from far.
Does all grow slowly nameless in your mouth?
Where words once were discoveries flow,
set free from the fruit's flesh, amazed.
Dare to say what you call "apple."
This sweetness that first condenses, thickens,
and then, finely sublimed in the taste,
grows clear, awake, transparent,
double-sided, sunny, earthly, native --:
O knowing, feeling, happiness--, immense!
Sonnet 15
Wait ..., this taste ... Already it's escaping.
... A bit of music, feet tapping, a hum --:
You girls, with your silences, your warmth,
dance the knowledge of the tasted fruit.
Dance the orange. Who can forget it,
the way it fights, drowning in itself,
against its sweetness. You've possessed it.
Its deliciousness has entered you.
Dance the orange. Fling the warmer landscape
out from you, so the ripe fruit may glow
in its native breezes! Aglow yourselves, peel
perfume from perfume. Create a kinship
with the pure, reluctant rind,
with the juice that fills the happy fruit.
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