Été: être pour quelques jours
le contemporain des roses;
respirer ce qui flotte autour
de leurs âmes écloses.
Faire de chacune qui se meurt
une confidante,
et survivre à cette sœur
en d’autres roses absente.
Summer: to be for just a few days
the friend of roses,
to breathe what floats around
their souls in bloom.
Make each dying rose
a confidante,
a surviving sister
of other absent roses.
Rainer Maria Rilke was born René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke in December 1875 in Prague. He lived in Prague until 1886, followed by residencies in Berlin, Munich, Russia, Paris, and Italy, where he authored the Duino Elegies. He is also the author of The Book of Hours, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Sonnets to Orpheus, and Letters to a Young Poet. He died of leukemia on December 29, 1926.
Micah McCrary is a regular contributor to The Nervous Breakdown and Bookslut. His essays, reviews, and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Identity Theory, Third Coast, Midwestern Gothic, The Essay Review, HTMLGIANT, South Loop Review, and Newcity. Former Assistant Editor at Hotel Amerika, and currently a reader at A Public Space, he holds an MFA in Nonfiction from Columbia College Chicago.