The Angels

for SSAATTBB choir
Text by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 – 1928), translation by Dr. Edward Snow

UTSA Concert Choir
Conductor, Dr. Gary Mabry


The Angels

They all have tired mouths
and bright seamless souls.
And a longing (as for sin)
sometimes haunts their dream.

They are almost all alike;
in God’s garden they keep still,
like many, many intervals
in his might and melody.

Only when they spread their wings
are they wakers of a wind:
as if God with his broad sculptor-
hands leafed through the pages
in the dark book of the beginning.