Pink Hydrangea
by Rainer Maria Rilke
( translation: Walter Arndt )
Who thought such pink could be? Who knew it there
Accumulating in each blushing cluster?
Like gilded things which by and by unluster
They gently grow unred as if from wear.
That one should give such rosiness out free!
Does it stay theirs still, smiling where it went?
Are angels there to take it tenderly like a scent?
Or, it may be, they only let it go
That it might never learn of overblowing.
Beneath this pink there lurked a greenness, though,
Which listened and now fades away, all knowing.