Claude Monet’s gardens in Giverny, France
“Spring has returned again.
The Earth is like a child
that knows poems by heart;
so many poems, so many verses,
patient toil winning her prizes at last.
Strict, the old teacher.
We loved the whiteness in the old
gentleman’s beard,
its bright snow.
Now when we ask what the green,
what the blue is,
Earth knows the answer,
has learned it.
She knows.
Earth, you’re on holiday,
lucky one: play now!
Play with us children!
We’ll try to catch you.
Glad, joyous Earth!
The gladdest must win.
Every lesson the old teacher
taught her,
all that is printed in roots
and laborious stems:
now she sings it!
Listen, Earth sings.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke
—
“The inspiration for this sonnet came from
a visit to Ronda, in southern Spain, in the
winter of 1912-13. Rilke had overheard a
group of schoolchildren singing in the Convent
of Santo Domingo, accompanied only by a
triangle and tambourine. He didn’t know what
their song meant, but the light-hearted
animation of their singing is reflected in the
cadences of the second and third stanzas.”
—
on international poetry day
I have my glasses on.... 