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28 August 2019updated 08 Sep 2021 6:40am

from Les Roses

A new poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Paul Batchelor. 

By trans. Paul Batchelor

A view of the middle-age stained glass rosace on the northern side of the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral, on November 29, 2012, in Paris. AFP PHOTO / PATRICK KOVARIK (Photo by PATRICK KOVARIK / AFP) (Photo credit should read PATRICK KOVARIK/AFP/Getty Images)

Familiar rose,
so implicated in our memories
as in a dream
where you advance upon your perfect form –

whose silence surpasses the choir’s
echo;
who triumphs in the rose window
or, held between two lovers, disappears.

Paul Batchelor is the author of “The Sinking Road” (Bloodaxe)

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