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28 August 2019

from Les Roses

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

By trans. Paul Batchelor

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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