Below are poems by Rilke that spoke to me as possibly useful for our work from my first read-through of The Poetry of Rilke, translation Edward Snow, 2009:

The Poetry of Rilke, translation Edward Snow, 2009. : From The Book of Hours

Now the hour bends down and touches me

with its clear, metallic ring:

my senses tremble. The feeling forms: I can - 

and I grasp the malleable day.

Nothing was complete before I saw it,

all becoming stood still.

My eyes are ripe, and whatever they desire

approaches like a bride.

Nothing is too small: against a gold background

I paint it large and lovingly

and hold it high, and I will never know

whose soul it may release...

I am, you anxious one. Don’t you hear me

surging against you with all my senses?

My feelings, which have found wings, circle

like white birds around your face.

And my soul - can’t you see it there

standing before you in a robe of silence?

Doesn’t my springtime prayer

ripen in your eyes as on a tree?

If you are a dreamer, I am your dream.

But if you choose to be awake, I am your will

and become the master of all majesty

and round to perfect stillness like a star

over the far-off city of time.

God talks to each of us as he creates us,

then walks with us silently out of night.

But the words, spoken to us before we start,

those cloudy words are these:

Sent forth by your senses, 

go to the very edge of your desire;

invest me.

Back behind the things grow as fire,

so that their shadows, lengthened,

will always and completely cover me.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Only press on: no feeling is final.

Don’t let yourself be cut off from me.

Nearby is that country

known as Life.

You will recognize it

by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

The Poetry of Rilke, translation Edward Snow, 2009. :  From The Book of Images

Solitude

Solitude is like a rain.

Toward evening it rises from the sea;

from plains that are distant and remote

it migrates to the sky, where it always is.

And only then it falls from the sky on the city.

It rains down in the in-between hours,

when toward dawn all the streets turn around again, 

and when those bodies that found nothing

leave each other sad and disappointed;

and when those people who detest each other

have to sleep together in one bed:

then solitude runs with the rivers...

The Poetry of Rilke, translation Edward Snow, 2009. : From New Poems

The Panther (Probably not as relevant, but I’m particularly drawn to the first stanza)

His gaze has from the passing of the bars

become so tired that it holds nothing anymore.

It seems to him there are a thousand bars

and behind a thousand bars no world.

The supple pace of powerful soft strides,

turning in the very smallest circle,

is like a dance of strength around a center

in which a mighty will stands numbed.

Only at times the curtain of the pupils

soundlessly slides open -. Then an image enters,

glides through the limbs’ taut stillness - 

dives into the heart and dies.

The Poetry of Rilke, translation Edward Snow, 2009. : From New Poems: The Other Part

The Solitary 

No: my heart shall be a tower,

and I myself set at its highest rim:

where nothing else exists, once again pain

and the unsayable, once again world.

Still one thing alone in immensity,

growing dark then light again,

still one last face full of longing

thrust out into the unappeasable,

still one uttermost face made of stone

heeding only its own inner gravity,

while the distances that silently destroy it

drive it on to an even deeper bliss.

The Poetry of Rilke, translation Edward Snow, 2009. :  From Uncollected Poems

Forget, forget, and let us live now

only this how the stars pierce the cleared

nocturnal sky; how the moon’s full disk

surmounts the gardens. We’ve sensed so long

how the darkness breeds many mirrors; how a gleam

takes shape, a white shadow in the radiance

of night. But now let us cross over

and invest this world where

everything is lunar - 

Unknowing before the heavens of my life

I stand in wonder. O the great stars.

The rising and going down. How quiet.

As if I didn’t exist. Am I a part? Did I abjure

the pure influence? Do high and low tide

alternate in my blood according to this order?

I’ll cast off all wished, all other links,

accustom my heart to its remotest space. Better

it live in terror of its stars than

in a dream of refuge, soothed by something near.

For Hans Carossa

Losing is also ours; and even forgetting

has its shape in the permanent realm of change.

things we’ve let go of circle; and though we’re rarely at the center

of these circles: they trace around us the unbroken figure.

Ah, not to be cut off

not by such slight partition

to be excluded from the stars’ measure.

What is inwardness?

What if not sky intensified,

flung through with birds and deep

with winds of homecoming.