I
Breathing, invisible poem! That great
world-space, at each inhalation
exchanged for this human existence. Counter-weight
of my rhythmical realization.
Single wavelet, whose slowly
gathering sea am I;
you, of all possible seas most frugal and lowly, --
space laid-by.
Of all these places in space, how many a one
has been within me already. Many a wind
seems like a son.
Do you know me, air, still full of my dwelling-places?
You, the one-time smooth skinned
rondure and leaf of my phrases.
II
Just as the handiest paper snatches
sometimes for ever the master-stroke,
often only the mirror catches
smiles that nothing will re-evoke
from maidens approving the morning alone,
or the image obsequious lamp-light graces;
and later the real, the breathing faces
merely reflect what was once their own.
What have eyes not gazed into quivering flosses
glowing among logs that have ceased to blaze? --
Glimpses of living, beyond recall.
Earth, O Earth, who could tell your losses?
Only who sang with unfaltering praise
of the heart, born into the midst of it all.
III
Mirrors: no one has yet distilled with
patient knowledge your fugitive
essence. Your spaces in time, that are filled with
holes like those of a sieve.
Squandering the empty ball-room's pomp,
deep as forests when twilight broods . . .
And, like sixteen-pointers, the lustres romp
through your virginal solitudes.
Pictures crowd you at times. A few
seem to be taken right within you,
shyly to others you wave adieu.
There, though, the fairest will always be,
till through to her lips withheld continue
Narcissus, released into lucency.
IV
This is the creature there has never been.
They never knew it, and yet, none the less,
they loved the way it moved, its suppleness,
its neck, its very gaze, mild and serene.
Not there, because they loved it, it behaved
as though it were. They always left some space.
And in that clear unpeopled space they saved
it lightly reared its head, with scarce a trace
of not being there. They fed it, not with corn,
but only with the possibility
of being. And that was able to confer
such strength, its brow put forth a horn. One horn.
Whitely it stole up to a maid, -- to be
within the silver mirror and in her.
V
Flower-muscle, gradually releasing
the anemone's pale meadow-day,
till at length into her lap unceasing
sky-light pours its polyphonic ray;
muscle stretching out that starry-flowered
quietness for endless welcoming;
so at times by fulness overpowered
that the restward call of evening
almost fails to bring your far-extended
petal-edges back to you once more:
world of will and power uncomprehended!
We, the violent, are not so fleeting.
Through what lives though must we pass before
we reach that stage of open-hearted greeting?
VI
You for Antiquity, rose throned in power,
were a calyx with only a single rim,
but for us of to-day you're the full, the numberless flower,
the theme whose depths we can only skim.
Grown so rich, you appear like draping on draping
about a body of air and fire;
though each of your leaves in itself is at once an escaping
and a disowning of all attire.
For centuries, name after sweetest name,
we have heard your fragrance singing:
suddenly it hangs in the air like fame.
And then we find to name it exceeds our powers. . .
And over to it go winging
memories yielded up by recallable hours.
VII
Flowers, whose kinship with ordering hands we are able
to feel at last (girls' hands, of once, of to-day),
who often, strewn all over the garden table.
tired and tenderly injured, lay
waiting for water to come, once more repealing
death already begun, -- and now
uplifted again between the poles of those feeling,
magnetical fingers you have to allow
can be far kinder than delicate you had guessed
on coming round in the jug, to find
you were cooling and slowly exhaling the warmth of girls, like
things confessed,
like tiring sins remembered in drwosy gloom,
despoiling of you committed, to bind
you to them once more, who blend with you in their bloom.
VIII
You few, the one-time sharers of childhood's treasure
in the city's scattered garden walks,
how we met and awoke in each other a hesitant pleasure,
and, like the lamb with the scroll that talks,
spoke without speaking. If sometimes happiness found us,
no one possessed it. Whose could it be?
And how it would melt among all those moving around us,
and the long year's anxiety.
Unconcerning carriages rolling and swerving,
houses surrounded us strongly - untruthfully, though, and never
a thing that knew us. Was anything real at all?
Nothing. Only the balls. Their glorious curving.
No, not even the children. . . Though one would ever
pass, ah, fleetingly! under the falling ball.
In memoriam Egon von Rilke
IX
Boast not, judges, of racks no longer required,
of throats no longer locked in the iron's embrace.
Not one heart has it heightened, that newly-acquired
spasm of mercy's milder grimace.
Things it has slowly collected, the scaffold one day
offers us back, like children their long-ago gifted
birthday toys. He'd enter the pure, the uplifted,
gate-wide open heart in a different way,
the god of genuine mercy. Mightily, spreading
flamelier our from his origin.
More than a wind for the great ships steadily heading.
Potent no less than that gentle unconscious awaring,
silently winning us over within
like the quietly playing child of an infinite paring.
X
Long will machinery menace the whole of our treasure,
while it, unmindful of us, dares to a mind of its own.
Checking the glorious hand's flaunting of lovelier leisure,
now for some stubborner work sternlier it fashions the stone.
Not for an hour will it stay, so that for once we may flee it,
oiling itself in a quiet factory, fitly employed.
Now it is life, no less, and feels best able to be it,
having, with equal resolve, ordered, constructed, destroyed.
Even to-day, though, existence is magical, pouring
freshly from hundreds of well-springs, -- a playing of purest
forces, which none can surprise without humbly adoring.
Words still melt into something beyond their embrace. . .
Music, too, keeps building anew with the insecurest
stones her celestial house in unusable space.
XI
Many a rule of death rose with deliberate rightness,
onwardly-conquering man, during your hunting past:
better than trap or net known to me, fluttering whiteness,
you they were wont to hang down in the cavernous Karst.
Gently letting you in, as were you a token
publishing peace. But then: vassal would twitch at your thong,
Night would cast from the caves pallid handfuls of broken-
flighted doves to the light. . .
Not even that, though, was wrong.
Far from the gazer remain every emotion but gladness,
not from the hunter alone, gathering, watchful and keen,
that which his suns have matured.
Killing merely is one form of our wandering sadness. . .
Pure in the spirit serene
's all we ourselves have endured.
XII
Choose to be changed. With the flame, with the flame be
enraptured,
where from within you a thing changefully-splendid escapes:
nothing whereby that earth-mastering artist is captured
more than the turning-point touched by his soaring shapes.
That which would stay what it is renounced existence:
does it feel safe in its shelter of lustreless grey?
Wait, a hardest is warning the hard from a distance,
heaved is a hammer from far away.
He who pours forth like a spring shall be known of his Knowing;
ravished, it leads him through cheerful creation, that closes
often as not with beginning and opens with end.
Parting's child or descendent is each glad space they are going
gazingly through. And now, feeling her metamorphosis,
laurelled Daphne wants you, changed to a wind, for her friend.
XIII
Anticipate all farewells, as were they behind you
now, like the winter going past.
For through some winter you feel such wintriness bind you,
your then out-wintering heart will always outlast.
Dead evermore in Eurydice, mount with more singing
mount to relation more pure with more celebrant, tongue.
Here, in this realm of the dwindlers and dregs, be a ringing
glass, which has, even though shivered to pieces, been rung.
Be -- and, perceiving in that which is being's negation
merely the infinite ground of your fervent vibration,
beat, through this never-again, to the fullest amount.
To the stock of used-up, as well as of dumb and decaying
things within copious Nature, those sums beyond saying,
count yourself joyfully in and destroy the account.
XIV
Flowers, so faithful to earth that has sent them hither,
whom we lend fate from the borders of fate -- and yet
who knows, when we think we see them regretfully wither,
if it is not for us to be their regrer?
To all that would soar our selves are the grand aggravation,
we lay them on all we encounter, proud of their weight;
what terrifying teachers we are for that part of creation
which loves its eternally childish state.
Could someone but take them right into his slumber and sleep
deeply with things, how differently, lightly he'd wander
back to a different day out of that communal deep.
Or, it may be, he would stay, and they'd blossom and praise
him, the converted, now one of them and all yonder
silent brothers and sisters in woodlands and ways.
XV
O fountain mouth, you mouth that can respond
so inexhaustibly to all who ask
with one, pure, single saying. Marble mask
before the water's flowing face. Beyond,
the aqueducts' long derivation. past
the tombs, from where the Apennines begin,
they bring your saying to you, which at last,
over the grizzled age of your dark chin,
falls to the waiting basin, crytsal-clear;
falls to the slumbering recumbent ear,
the marble ear, with which you still confer.
One of earth's ears. With her own lonely mood
she thus converses. Let a jug intrude,
she'll only think you've interrupted her.
XVI
Still the god remains an ever-growing
wholeness we have irritably burst.
We are sharp, for we insist on knowing,
he exists serenly and dispersed.
Even gifts of purest consecration
only find acceptance in so much
as he turns in moveless contemplation
to the end we do not touch.
Only those who dwell
out of sight can taste the spring we hear,
when the god has silently assented.
With its brawling we must be contented.
And the lamb's more silent instinct's clear
when it begs us for its bell.
XVII
Where, in what ever-blissfully watered gardens, upon what trees,
out of, oh, what gently dispetalled flower-cups do these
so strange-looking fruits of consolation mature?
Delicious, when, now and then, you pick one up in the poor
trampled field of your poverty. Time and again you find
yourself lost in wonder over the size of the fruit,
over its wholesomeness, over its smooth, soft rind,
and that neither the heedless bird above nor jealous worm at the root
has been before you. Are there, then, trees where angels will congregate,
trees invisible leisurely gardeners so curiously cultivate,
that, without being oursm they bear for us fruit like those?
Have we, then, never been able, we shadows and shades,
with our doing that ripens too early and then as suddenly fades,
to disturb that even-tempered summer's repose?
XVIII
Dancer: you transmutation
of all going-by into going: what you have wrought!
And your finishing whirl, that tree of mere animation,
how it took over the year you had flyingly caught!
Did not its crown, that your swaying might settle to swarming,
suddenly blossom with stillness? Above that, too,
was there not sunnily, was there not summerly warming
all the warmth that exhaled from you?
Nay, it was able, your tree of rapture, to bear.
Are they not, all its fruits that so peacefully shine,
jug streaked with ripeness, vase further ripened, still there?
And does not your mark in their paintings still meet the discerning --
that of your eyebrows' darker line
swiftly inscribed on the wall of your own swift turning?
XIX
Gold dwells somewhere at ease in the pampering bank,
mixing with thousands on intimate terms. But to any
coin that blind man begging, to even a penny,
seems but a desolate place, a chink in a dusty plank.
Money shines out from the shops in its own dimension,
plausibly masking in silk, carnation, and fur.
He, though, silently stands in the breath-suspension
of all the money breathing, asleep or astir.
Oh, how does it ever close at night, that perpetually open hand?
Fate to-morrow will fetch it back and display it,
bright, poor, endlessly fragile, year after year.
Could but at last some gazer, astoundedly coming to understand,
celebrate its persistence! - Only a singer could say it.
Only a god could hear.
XX
Inter-stellar spaces -- ah yes, but how mnay times greater spaces terrestrial are!
First, for example, a child. . . then a neighbour, a moment later, --
oh, how incredibly far!
Fate but through spanning us, maybe, with Being's measure
seems so strange to our eyes:
think of the spans to a man from a maid, whose pleasure
lingers with him she flies!
All is remote -- nowhere does the circle close
Look at that curious face on the welcoming table,
staring out of its dish.
Fishes are dumb,. . . so one imagined. Who knows?
May there not be some place where, without them, the dwellers
are able
to speak what would be the language of fish?
XXI
Sing those gardens, my heart, poured as into a glass,
gardens you have not known, transparent, untrampled.
Waters and roses of Ispahan or Shiras,
blissfully sing them, praise them, the unexampled.
Show that by you, my heart, they are never missed:
pleasure for you their ripening figs are preparing,
you with their breezes, almost visibly bearing
fragrance of blossoming branches, can always tryst.
Know that no want exists for, no hand bereaving
takes from, the acted resolution: to be.
Silken thread, you have entered into the weaving.
Feel, with what pattern soever you're inwardly blended
(even a scene from the story of Agony),
feel that the whole, the praisable, carpet's intended.
XXII
Oh, but in spite of fate, life's glorious abundance
foaming over in parks and splendid estates, --
or in stone men, with all their straining redundance,
under balconies built over lofty gates.
Oh, the brazen bell that daily uplifts its solemn
hammer against the dullness of every day.
Or the one, the only, at Karnak, the column, the column,
surviving almost eternal temples' decay.
Now, though, the overflowings of that same font all
plunge but as speed from the yellow, the horizontal
day to the night so dazzlingly overwrought.
Rushing by but to vanish and leace no traces.
Lingering spirals of flight through ethereal spaces, --
not one, perhaps, is in vain. Yet as were they but thought.
XXIII
Call me to your lonely meeting-places
with the hour that always says you nay:
suppliantly near you, like dogs' faces,
time and time again, though, turned away,
when at last you think that it is yours.
Things thus snatched from you are most your own.
We are free -- dismissed from those same doors
where we thought such welcome had been shown.
Anxiously we hanker for a holdfast,
we, too youthful sometimes for the old past,
and too old for what has never been.
We, whose righteousness depends how far we
praise, for branch and axe and sweetness are we
of a peril ripening unseen.
XXIV
Oh, delight leaping ever-new when we loosen the soil!
Hardly a hand lent the earliest darers assistance.
Towns arose none the less on gulds to a blessed existence,
pitchers were filled none the less with water and oil.
Gods, -- we plan them in bold provisional sketches
cross-grained Fate takes from us and flings to the past.
Still, they are the Immortals. Our spirit outstretches,
hearkening-out the one that will hear it at last.
We, but one race for millennia, growing ever greater,
age after age, with that child of the future whose birth
shall so entirely surpass and astonish us, later.
We, so immeasurably ventured, what aeons attend us!
And only taciturn Death knows what we are worth,
and how much it always pays him to lend us.
XXV
Hark, the earliest harrows striving
already; the rhythm of man once more
breaks the tense stillness around reviving
pre-vernal earth. What has come before
seems to return as unstaled as ever.
No new-comer, it comes like new.
Looked for again and again, you never
could capture it. Always it captured you.
Sunset splashes the wintered oaken
leaves with a brown that is yet to be.
Sometimes breezes exchange a token.
Black are the hedges. But heaps of dung
crouch more statedly black on the lea.
Hours grow more eternally young.
XXVI
How it thrills us, the bird's clear cry. . .
Any cry that was always there.
Children, playing in the open air,
children already go crying by
real cries. Cry chance in. Through crevasses
in that same space whereinto, as dreaming
men into dreams, the pure bird-cry passes
they drive their splintering wedge of screaming.
Where are we? Freer and freer, we gyre
only half up, kites breaking
loose, with our frills of laughter flaking
away in the wind. -- Make the criers a choir,
singing god! that resurgently waking
may bear on its waters the head and the lyre.
XXVII
Does it exist, though, Time the destroyer?
When will it scatter the tower on the resting hill?
This heart, the eternal gods' eternal enjoyer,
when shall the Demiurge ravish and spill?
Are we really such tremblingly breakable
things as Destiny tries to pretend?
Does childhood's promise, deep, unmistakable,
down in the roots, then, later, end?
Ah, Mutability's spectre!
out through the simple accepter
you, like a vapour, recede.
We, though we wax but for waning,
fill none the less for remaining
powers a celestial need.
XXVIII
Oh, come and go, you almost child, enhancing
for one brief hour the figure of the dance
to purest constellation of that dancing
where, subject as we are to change and chance,
we beat dull nature. For she only started
hearing with all her ears at Orpheus' song.
And you still moved with motion then imparted,
and shrank a little when a tree seemed long
in treading with you the remembered pace.
You knew it still, that passage where the lyre
soundingly rose, the unimagined centre,
and practised all your steps in hope to enter
that theme again, whirling to one entire
communion with your friend both feet and face.
XXIX
Silent friend of those far from us, feeling
how your breath is still enlarging space,
fill the sombre belfry with your pealing/
What consumes you now is growing apace
stronger than the feeding strength it borrows.
Be, as Change will have you, shade or shine.
Which has grieved you most of all your sorrows?
Turn, if drinking's bitter, into wine.
Be, in this immeasurable night,
at your senses' cross-ways magic cunning,
be the sense of their mysterious tryst.
And, should earthliness forget you quite,
murmur to the quiet earth: I'm running.
Tell the running water: I exist.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke (Translated by J. B. Leishman)