What Will You Do?Author(s): Babette Deutsch, Avrahm Yarmolinsky and Rainer Maria RilkeSource: Poetry, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Dec., 1922), p. 142Published by: Poetry FoundationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20573865 .

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POETRY: i Magazine of Verse

WHAT WILL YOU DO?

By Rainer Maria Rilke

What will you do, God, when I die? I am your jar (if cracked, I lie?) Your well-spring (if the well go dry?) I am your craft, your vesture I

You lose your purport, losing me.

When I go, your cold house will be Empty of words that made it sweet. I am the sandals-your bare feet

Will seek and long for, wearily.

Your cloak will fall from aching bones. Your glance, that my warm cheeks have cheered As with a cushion long endeared, Will wonder at a loss so weird; And, when the sun has disappeared, Lie in the lap of alien stones.

What will you do, God? I am feared.

AN OLD WOMAN PASSES

By Franz Werfel

An old woman passes like a rotund tower Down the street, stormed by a leafy shower. Soon she disappears, and panting, trots Where black mists in gusty nooks are blowing.

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