My life is not this steeply sloping hour,
in which you see me hurrying.
Much stands behind me; I stand before it like a tree;
I am only one of my many mouths,
and at that, the one that will be still the soonest.

I am the rest between two notes,
which are somehow always in discord
because Death’s note wants to climb over-
but in the dark interval, reconciled,
they stay there trembling.
                                      And the song goes on, beautiful.

From Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Bly

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