TRANSLATION - Rainer Maria Rilke - page a month

Firewatch. They sit and wait.
Waiting… they’d sing of it, if weariness did not keep them silent. The red light is heavy. It falls like dust over their feet. It crawls up to the knee, illuminates folded hands. It is flightless. Their faces are in the dark. And yet, for some time now, the eyes of the small Frenchman have been illuminated. He has kissed a tiny rose, and returned it to his breast, where it now wilts. The man from Langenau has seen the rose because he cannot fall asleep. He thinks: I have no rose, none.
This, raises his voice. And he sings a dirge that the women at home sing in the fields, in fall, once the harvest is complete.

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The little Marquis says: “You seem very young, sir?”
And the man from Langenau, half in sorrow, half in defiance: “Eighteen.” Then silence.
Later, the Frenchman asks: “Do you have a bride at home, Mr. Donzel?”
“You?” comes the response from the man from Langenau.
“She is blond like you.”
And silence falls, until the German bursts: “Why the devil? Why do you sit there in your saddle and ride through this irritable land to fight Turkish, then?”
The Marquis laughs. “To return.”
And the man from Langenau becomes solem. He thinks of the blond girls with whom he used to play. Wild play. He would like to return to his house, for only the blink of an eye, only for that long, but instead only the words: “Magdalena - that I may be forgiven!”
How - ? thinks the young man. - Once again, they are unfathomable.

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One day, in the morning, there is a rider, and then two, three, ten. All in ice, huge. Then a thousand behind them. The army.
Everyone must separate.
“Good luck, Marquis.--”
“May the Maria protect you, Mr. Donzel.”
They may never hear of one another again. And once they were friends; brothers. When once, they had one another to confide in, now they find that they cannot tell one man from another. They hesitate, falter. The haste and hoof beats resound around them. The Marquis pulls off his heavy right-hand glove. He takes out the little rose, holds a petal to the man from Langenau, like a man might break off and offer a host.
“That this may shelter you. Take care--”
The man from Langenau is astonished. He looks at the Frenchman for what seems forever. Then he slides the foreign petal under his tunic. And it swells from the billows of his heart. Horn call. He rides with the army, the donzel. He laughs sadly to himself: an unknown woman protects me.