Time and Again, by Rainer Maria Rilke

Time and again, however well we know the landscape of love,

and the little church-yard with lamenting names,

and the frightfully silent ravine wherein all the others

end: time and again we go out two together,

under the old trees, lie down again and again

between the flowers, face to face with the sky.

Translated by J.B. LEISHMAN

From “99 Poems in Translation,” selected by Harold Pinter, Anthony Astbury and Geoffrey Godbert (Grove Press: 150 pp., $11)