Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, 8b

You few, from erstwhile childhood games
in the scattered gardens of the city:
how we found and hesitantly liked each other
and, like the lamb with the talking leaf

spoke as the dumb. If we were ever glad,
none of us admitted it. Whose happiness was it?
as it melted under all the hurrying feet,
and in the apprehension of the long year ahead.

Carriages rolled around us strangely,
Houses surrounded us solidly, but falsely—and no one
ever knew us. What was really there for us?
Nothing. Only the balls, their magnificent arc.

Not even the children ... But sometimes one stepped,
ah, for barely a moment, under the falling ball.

            In memory of Egon von Rilke