Alec Soth, Misty

Misty, by Alec Soth, from Niagara, 2005.

Archaic Torso of Apollo, by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell.

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.

Translation copyright © 1982 by Stephen Mitchell, from Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. Quoted here in full for criticism; rights remain with the translator. The poem at the Poetry Foundation.