The Insane

The Insane

They've fallen silent now, because the wall that separates
the mental from the concrete life is gone;
and there are too few articulate minutes
in their hour to say what they go through.

Suddenly, however, and often late at night,
they get well.
The hands lie among actual things,
the heart remembers how to pray,
and the eyes gaze down, unaghast,

into the clarity--no longer even hoped for--
of a garden in the quiet square.
A few can recall how it really appears
when they return to their own strangeness forever.


Translated from the German of Rainer Maria Rilke
Translation by Franz Wright published in God's Silence © 2006