Childhood Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke

Childhood

Rating: 3.3


It would be good to give much thought, before
you try to find words for something so lost,
for those long childhood afternoons you knew
that vanished so completely -and why?

We're still reminded-: sometimes by a rain,
but we can no longer say what it means;
life was never again so filled with meeting,
with reunion and with passing on

as back then, when nothing happened to us
except what happens to things and creatures:
we lived their world as something human,
and became filled to the brim with figures.

And became as lonely as a sheperd
and as overburdened by vast distances,
and summoned and stirred as from far away,
and slowly, like a long new thread,
introduced into that picture-sequence
where now having to go on bewilders us.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Jagannath rao Adukuri 06 March 2006

'Nothing happened to us except what happens to things and creatures'- a childhood experience of unawareness is so beautifully captured here.

18 2 Reply
William H 23 November 2015

There is actually a human disposition where the think of this present like it is the infinite present, and that the future will always be in the future, and the past in the past, not acknowledging this will be in our distant past and once was in the distant future. This captures this beautifully.

9 2 Reply
Leela dapolkar 10 November 2018

dapolkar in a way I will send you the link and hu 6se7जहँसियस2ysysyeywyte3fgwywओवरव्यूtwttwtwtet6

3 5 Reply
Leela Chatterjee 19 May 2018

Some of my childhood memories have completely disappeared from my life. I love this poes.

7 4 Reply
Yuvraj 03 May 2018

Thank you your poem is nice

5 3 Reply
Casey Wambach 03 February 2018

I'm doing a poem project at school and you executed your memories to perfection.

3 4 Reply
Ratnakar Mandlik 16 November 2016

Haunting and sweet memoirs of childhood stored down the memory lane. Thanks for sharing it here.

9 1 Reply
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Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke

Prague / Czech Republic
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