By The Last Supper - Rainer Maria Rilke

Here they are gathered, wondering and deranged,

Round Him, who wisely doth Himself inclose,

And who now takes Himself away, estranged,

From those who owned Him once, and past them flows.

He feels the ancient loneliness to-day

That taught Him all His deepest acts of love;

Now in the olive groves He soon will rove,

And these who love Him all will flee away.

To the last supper table He hath led.

As birds are frightened from a garden-bed

By shots, so He their hands forth from the bread

Doth frighten by His word: to Him they flee;

Then flutter round the table in their fright

And seek a passage from the hall. But He

Is everywhere, like dusk at fall of night.

---

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926) Germany

Translated by Margarete Münsterberg

Source: A Harvest of German Verse, Margarete Münsterberg, ed., trans. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1916