Death Experience

Rainer Maria Rilke

We know nothing of this going away,
that shares nothing with us.
We have no reason,
whether astonishment and love or hate,
to display Death, whom a fantastic mask of tragic lament
astonishingly disfigures.

Now the world is still full of roles
which we play as long as we make sure,
that, like it or not, Death plays, too,
although he does not please us.

But when you left, a strip of reality broke upon the stage
through the very opening
through which you vanished:
Green, true green, true sunshine, true forest.

We continue our play.

Picking up gestures now and then,
and anxiously reciting that which was difficult to learn;
but your far away, removed out of our performance existence,
sometimes overcomes us, as an awareness
descending upon us of this very reality,
so that for a while we play Life rapturously,
not thinking of any applause.