The author tries to find an answer to the question: what is it like to translate a poem? Translating a poem is a whole process, which often takes several weeks, translating half a line and the other half the next week. The author here simplifies the process of translation into eight stages, meaning the stages one goes though from the first meeting with a poem to its recreation, when one says goodbye to it. The stages often collapse into each other. As an example, the author chooses to translate a sonnet from Rilke’s first series of the Sonnets to Orpheus.