who chooses

Things eternal want to join us. Who chooses, 

and separates the great and lesser powers? 

Can't you see through the twilight of the shops 

the last supper shining in the back room: 

 

how they hold it there and pass it on 

and in those actions gravely, simply rest. 

From their hands the signs are rising; 

they don't know that they perform them, 

 

and newly with each exchange of words 

establish what one drinks and what one shares. 

For there is no one anyplace who isn't 

secretly departing, even as he stays. 

 

And doesn't someone always sit among them 

who gives away his parents, still anxiously 

serving him, to their completed, cast-off time? 

(To sell them would not be worth his while.) 

 

[Rainer Maria Rilke {1875-1926} 'Evening Meal', from New Poems {1908}]