Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke (1918)/Pont du Carrousel

by Rainer Maria Rilke

PONT DU CARROUSEL

 

Upon the bridge the blind man stands alone,
Gray like a mist veiled monument he towers
As though of nameless realms the boundary stone
About which circle distant starry hours.

 

He seems the center around which stars glow
While all earth's ostentations surge below.

 

Immovably and silently he stands
Placed where the confused current ebbs and flows;
Past fathomless dark depths that he commands
A shallow generation drifting goes . . .