Fragments IV

My own original words coming soon...

And you inherit the green
of vanquished gardens
and the motionless blue of fallen skies,
[...]

You inherit the autumns, folded like festive clothing
in the memories of poets; and all the winters,
like abandoned fields, bequeath you their quietness.
You inherit Venice, Kazan, and Rome.

Florence will be yours, and Pisa's cathedral,
Moscow with bells like memories,
[...]

Sounds will be yours, of string and brass and reed,
and sometimes the songs will seem
to come from inside you.

[...]
And painters paint their pictures only
that the world, so transient as you made it,
can be given back to you,
to last forever.

[...]

And lovers also gather your inheritance.
They are the poets of one brief hour.
They kiss an expressionless mouth into a smile
as if creating it anew, more beautiful.

Awakening desire, they make a place
where pain can enter;
that's how growing happens.
[...]

Thus the overflow from things
pours into you.
Just as a fountain's higher basins
spill down like strands of loosened hair
into the lower vessel,
so streams the fullness into you,
when things and thoughts cannot contain it.

-RM Rilke