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by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)
Translation © by Anita Barrows and by Joanna Macy

Dein allererstes Wort war: Licht
Language: German (Deutsch) 
Dein allererstes Wort war: Licht:
da ward die Zeit. Dann schwiegst du lange.
Dein zweites Wort ward Mensch und bange
(wir dunkeln noch in seinem Klange),
und wieder sinnt dein Angesicht.

Ich aber will dein drittes nicht.
Ich bete nachts oft: Sei der Stumme,
der wachsend in Gebärden bleibt
und den der Geist im Traume treibt,
daß er des Schweigens schwere Summe
in Stirnen und Gebirge schreibt.

Sei du die Zuflucht vor dem Zorne,
der das Unsagbare verstieß.
Es wurde Nacht im Paradies:
sei du der Hüter mit dem Horne,
und man erzählt nur, daß er blies.

About the headline (FAQ)

Confirmed with Rainer Maria Rilke, Das Stunden-Buch, Leipzig : Insel-Verlag, 1918, p.31


Text Authorship:

  • by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926), no title, appears in Das Stundenbuch, in 1. Das Buch vom mönchischen Leben , no. 44

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Researcher for this page: Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website: 2023-08-19
Line count: 16
Word count: 97

Your first word was light
 (Sung text for setting by B. Mehldau)
 Matches base text
Language: English  after the German (Deutsch) 
Your first word was light
 [ ... ]
This text may be copyright, so we will not display it until we obtain permission to do so or discover it is public-domain.

Composition:

    Set to music by Brad Mehldau (b. 1970), "Your first word was light", first performed 2005 [ voice and piano ], from Seven Songs from Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, no. 1

Text Authorship:

  • by Anita Barrows , copyright ©
  • by Joanna Macy , copyright ©

Based on:

  • a text in German (Deutsch) by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926), no title, appears in Das Stundenbuch, in 1. Das Buch vom mönchischen Leben , no. 44
    • Go to the text page.

Go to the general single-text view

This text was added to the website: 2023-08-19
Line count: 14
Word count: 91

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