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There rose a tree, O more than mere uprising!
O Orpheus sings! O tall tree in the ear!
and everything grew still. But stillness, more surprising,
saw a new beginning, sign, and change appear.
Animals of silence thronged from the clear
and loosened woods from nest and den.
and it was evident that they’d grown quiet then
not from deceit and not from any fear,
but from hearing. Bellow, screeching, roar, seemed small
inside their hearts. And where, as this drew near,
hardly a hut had been to meet their thronging,
A shelter built of darkest longing,
when one approach, whose doorposts tremble,—
there you created temples they could hear.
— Rilke. Translation by John Rosenwald
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