Please Don't Talk

Your first word of all was light,
and time began. Then for long you were silent.

Your second word was man, and fear began,
which grips us still.

Are you about to speak again?
I don't want your third word.

Sometimes I pray: Please don't talk.
Let all your doing be by gesture only.
Go on writing in faces and stone
what your silence means.

You be our refuge from the wrath
that drove us out of Paradise.

Be our shepherd, but never call us--
we can't bear to know what's ahead.

-From Rilke's Book of Hours

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