Duino Elegies

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic
orders? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly to his heart: I''d be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we can just barely endure,
and we stand in awe of it as it coolly disdains
to destroy us. Every angel is terrifying.
-from "The First Elegy"

Over the last fifteen years, in his two vo...