Oberlin College Press

Rainer Maria Rilke

THE BOOK OF FRESH BEGINNINGS (translated by David Young)

Cloth (ISBN 0-932440-68-1) SALE PRICE $19.95

Rilke shows us how poetry made the transition from romanticism and symbolism into true Modernism. This new selection, drawing primarily on his extremely rich middle period in the first decade of the twentieth century, and concluding with a selection from his late Sonnets to Orpheus, offers a clear, powerful, and contemporary Rilke.

David Young's versions of the Duino Elegies have captured a significant readership over the last thirty years. He has also translated Gunter Eich, Eugenio Montale, the T'ang dynasty poets, and Miroslav Holub.

BLUE HYDRANGEAS

These leaves are like the last vestige of green
you find in dye-pots, rough and dull and dry,
behind some blossom-clusters wearing blue
that's not their own, mirrored from far away.

They mirror it vaguely and tearfully,
as if they secretly wished it gone again;
and just like old blue stationery, they
have yellow tints, and violets and grays;

as faded as a much-washed child's apron
no longer used, with nothing else to happen:
you feel how short the little life has been.

Then all at once the blue seems to renew
in one of the clusters, and you see how
a touching blue delights itself in green.

--Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by David Young