my life is not this steeply sloping hour

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My life is not this steeply sloping hour,
in which you see me hurrying.

Much stands behind me: I stand before it like a tree:
I am only one of many mouths
and at that, the one that will be still the soonest.

I am the rest between two notes,
which are somehow always in discord
because Death's note wants to climb over—

but the dark interval, reconciled,

They stay here trembling.

And the song goes on, beautiful.

–Rainer Maria Rilke

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