We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
When I think of Apollo I think, possibly as the majority, of glistening muscles and perfect human form. Rilke seems to be describing the lot of this in the first three stanzas, but then the fourth stanza walks off a cliff...to...where? Is he telling us not to be as Apollo and take so much pride in the physical form or is he telling us to take more pride? I have no idea.
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