| Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22. | | | | What Will You Do? | | By Rainer Maria Rilke |
| | From “Modern German Poems”
Translated by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky |
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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. | 5 |
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| 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. | |
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| Your cloak will fall from aching bones. | 10 |
| 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. | 15 |
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| What will you do, God? I am feared. | | | |
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