VI

Rose, you majesty-once, to the ancients
  you were
just a calyx with the simplest of rims.
But for us, you are the full, the numberless flower,
the inexhaustible countenance.

In your wealth you seem to be wearing
  gown upon gown
upon a body of nothing but light;
yet each separatae petal is at the same time
  the negation
of all clothing and the refusal of it.

Your fragrance has been calling its
  sweetest names
in our direction, for hundreds of years;
suddenly it hangs in the air like fame.

Even so, we have never know what to call
  it; we guess...
And memory is filled with it unawares
which we prayed for from hours that
  belong to us.
-Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus