Margarete Münsterberg, ed., trans. A Harvest of German Verse. 1916.
By Glimpse of a ChildhoodRainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)
T
To fold about the boy who hides himself;
And when his mother enters, as if dreaming,
A glass is trembling on the quiet shelf.
She feels that now her entrance is betrayed,
And kisses her small boy: “Oh, you are there!”…
They glance at the piano where she played
On many evenings the beloved air
That strangely on the child its magic laid.
Her hand, weighed down beneath the ring, and slow,
As if it walked against a gale through snow,
Move on the snow-white keys.