The Voices
by Rainer Maria Rilke
It's OK for the rich and the lucky to keep still,
no one wants to know about them anyway.
But those in need have to step forward,
have to say: I am blind,
or: nothing is going well with me,
or: I have a child who is sick,
or: right there I'm sort of glued together...
And probably that doesn't do anything either.
They have to sing, if they didn't sing, everyone
would walk past, as if they were fences or trees.
That's where you can hear good singing.
People really are strange: they prefer
to hear castratos in boychoirs.
But God himself comes and stays a long time
when the world of half-people start to bore him.