WHAT WILL YOU DO?

By Ranier Maria Rilke

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.

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.

Your cloak will fall from aching bones.
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.

What will you do, God? I am feared.

Translated by B. Deutsch and A. Yarmolinsky

Rainer Maria Rilke was born on December 4, 1875, in Prague, Bohemia (modern-day Czech Republic). His books include The Life of the Virgin Mary (C. Triltsch, 1922), translated by R. G. L. Barrett, and Poems (Tobias A. Wright, 1918), translated by Jessie Lemont, among others. He died on December 29, 1926, in Switzerland.

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I received this poem from The Poetry Foundation.  They have a  poem-a-day subscription service.

These words seem appropriately incomprehensible. The poem is addressed to God.  Perhaps a prayer?  Rilke suggests that each of us is necessary to God as a container, as a craft, or a repository of creative refreshment.  God walks by means of us, as with sandaled-feet.  When we go, and go we will— our loss will be felt as is if the sun has disappeared behind dark clouds.  The world becomes a bit more alien without you or I.

The final line is a question that trembles with its asking.