song is existence

Song, as you teach it, is not desire,
not the urge for a final slender achievement;
Song is existence. The god sings with ease.
When, though, will we exist? And when will he turn

the earth and the stars in our direction?
You do not love this, oh youth, although
your voice bursts open your lips—learn

to forget that you once sang out. It passes.
To sing in the truth is a different order of breath.
An order around nothing. A moan in the god. A wind.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke The Sonnets to Orpheus
Translated by Norbert Ruebsaat