On the Edge of the Night

My room and this vastness,
awake over parroting land, -
are one. I am a string,
strung over rustling wide
resonances.

The things are violin bodies,
full of grumbling dark;
inside the wifes' weeping is dreaming,
inside the rancour of whole dynasties
is stirring in the sleep…
I shall
shake silverly: then
everything underneath me will live,
and what errs in the things,
will strive after the light,
which falls from my dancing tone,
around which heaven waves,
through narrow, yearning cracks,
into the old
chasms without
end…

Rilke