Poetry Platform - the largest database of poetry, save it to read later!

Poems

A Sybil Read Poem

Long before our time they called her old,
But she'd walk down the same road every day.

Her age became too much to say
In years — and, like a forest's, would be told
In centuries.

She comes to stand at dusk —
Her spot each time the same — and to foretell.

She is a hollow, wrinkled husk,
Dark as a fire-gutted citadel.

She has to turn her flock of talking loose
Or it will grow too crowded to relieve.

Flapping and screaming, words are flying all
Around her.

Then, returning home to roost,
They find a perch beneath her eyebrows' eaves,
And in that shadow wait for night to fall.

A Walk Read Poem

My eyes already touch the sunny hill.

going far beyond the road I have begun,
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has an inner light, even from a distance-
and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave…
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

Translated by Robert Bly

Abishag Read Poem

I
She lay, and serving-men her lithe arms took,
And bound them round the withering old man,
And on him through the long sweet hours she lay,
And little fearful of his many years.

And many times she turned amidst his beard
Her face, as often as the night-owl screeched,
And all that was the night around them reached
Its feelers manifold of longing fears.

As they had  been the sisters of the child
The stars trembled, and fragrance searched the room,
The curtain stirring sounded with a sign
Which drew her gentle glances after it.

But she clung close upon the dim old man,
And, by the night of nights not over-taken,
Upon  the cooling of the King she lay
Maidenly, and lightly as a soul.

II
The King sate thinking out the empty day
Of deeds accomplished and untasted joys,
And of his favorite bitch that he had bredC
But with the evening Abishag was arched
Above him.

His disheveled life lay bare,
Abandoned as diffamed coasts, beneath
The quiet constellation of her breasts.

But many times, as one in women skilled,
he through his eyebrows recognized the mouth
Unmoved, unkissed; and saw: the comet green
Of her desired reached not to where he lay.

He shivered.

And he listened like a hound,
And sought himself in his remaining blood.

Adam Read Poem

Marveling he stands on the cathedral's
steep ascent, close to the rose window,
as though frightened at the apotheosis
which grew and all at once
set him down over these and these.

And straight he stands and glad of his endurance,
simply determined; as the husbandman
who began and who knew not how
from the garden of Eden finished-full
to find a way out into
the new earth.

God was hard to persuade;
and threatened him, instead of acceding,
ever and again, that he would die.

Yet man persisted: she will bring forth.

Advent Read Poem

The wind in winter woods is like
a shepherd to his flock of flakes
and soon the firs anticipate
how blessed will be the light
and eavesdrop.

The garden doves
ready themselves in branches white
and fend off the wind, growing towards
the glory of this night.

Translated from the original German:
Es treibt der Wind im Winterwalde
die Flockenherde wie ein Hirt,
und manche Tanne ahnt, wie balde
sie fromm und lichterheilig wird,
und lauscht hinaus.

Den weißen Wegen
streckt sie die Zweige hin -- bereit,
und wehrt dem Wind und wächst entgegen
der einen Nacht der Herrlichkeit.

Again and Again Read Poem

Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.

Along the Sun-Drenched Roadside Read Poem

Along the sun-drenched roadside, from the great
hollow half-treetrunk, which for generations
has been a trough, renewing in itself
an inch or two of rain, I satisfy
my thirst: taking the water's pristine coolness
into my whole body through my wrists.

Drinking would be too powerful, too clear;
but this unhurried gesture of restraint
fills my whole consciousness with shining water.

Thus, if you came, I could be satisfied
to let my hand rest lightly, for a moment,
lightly, upon your shoulder or your breast.

As Once the Winged Energy of Delight Read Poem

As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.

Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.

To work with Things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;
the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions…For the god
wants to know himself in you.

At The Brink Of Night Read Poem

My room and this distance,
awake upon the darkening land,
are one.

I am a string
stretched across deep
surging resonance.

Things are violin bodies
full of murmuring darkness,
where women's weeping dreams,
where the rancor of whole generations
stirs in its sleep .

.

.

I should release
my silver vibrations: then
everything below me will live,
and whatever strays into things
will seek the light
that falls without end from my dancing tone
into the old abysses
around which heaven swells
through narrow
imploring
rifts.

Autumn Read Poem

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.

Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no.

"
And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.

We're all falling.

This hand here is falling.

And look at the other one.

It's in them all.

And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.

Autumn Day Read Poem

Lord: it is time.

The summer was immense.

Lay your shadow on the sundials
and let loose the wind in the fields.

Bid the last fruits to be full;
give them another two more southerly days,
press them to ripeness, and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will not build one
anymore.

Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long
time,
will stay up, read, write long letters,
and wander the avenues, up and down,
restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.

Before Summer Rain Read Poem

Suddenly, from all the green around you,
something-you don't know what-has disappeared;
you feel it creeping closer to the window,
in total silence.

From the nearby wood
you hear the urgent whistling of a plover,
reminding you of someone's Saint Jerome:
so much solitude and passion come
from that one voice, whose fierce request the downpour
will grant.

The walls, with their ancient portraits, glide
away from us, cautiously, as though
they weren't supposed to hear what we are saying.

And reflected on the faded tapestries now;
the chill, uncertain sunlight of those long
childhood hours when you were so afraid.

Behind The Blameless Trees Read Poem

Behind the blameless trees
old fate slowly builds
her mute countenance.

Wrinkles grow there .

.

.

What a bird shrieks here
springs there like a gasp of warning
from a soothsayer's hard mouth.

And the soon-to-be lovers
smile on each other, not yet knowing farewell,
and round about them, like a constellation,
their destiny casts
its nightly spell.

Still to come, it does not reach out to them,
it remains
a phantom
floating in its heavenly course.

Black Cat (Schwarze Katze) Read Poem

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:
just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them.

But all at once
as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.

Schwarze Katze
Ein Gespenst ist noch wie eine Stelle,
dran dein Blick mit einem Klange stößt;
aber da, an diesem schwarzen Felle
wird dein stärkstes Schauen aufgelöst:
wie ein Tobender, wenn er in vollster
Raserei ins Schwarze stampft,
jählings am benehmenden Gepolster
einer Zelle aufhört und verdampft.

Alle Blicke, die sie jemals trafen,
scheint sie also an sich zu verhehlen,
um darüber drohend und verdrossen
zuzuschauern und damit zu schlafen.

Doch auf einmal kehrt sie, wie geweckt,
ihr Gesicht und mitten in das deine:
und da triffst du deinen Blick im geelen
Amber ihrer runden Augensteine
unerwartet wieder: eingeschlossen
wie ein ausgestorbenes Insekt.

Blank Joy Read Poem

She who did not come, wasn't she determined
nonetheless to organize and decorate my heart?

If we had to exist to become the one we love,
what would the heart have to create?

Lovely joy left blank, perhaps you are
the center of all my labors and my loves.

If I've wept for you so much, it's because
I preferred you among so many outlined joys.

Translated by A.

Poulin

Buddha in Glory Read Poem

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet—
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.

Illuminated in your infinite peace,
a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.

But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.

Child In Red Read Poem

Sometimes she walks through the village in her
little red dress
all absorbed in restraining herself,
and yet, despite herself, she seems to move
according to the rhythm of her life to come.

She runs a bit, hesitates, stops,
half-turns around…
and, all while dreaming, shakes her head
for or against.

Then she dances a few steps
that she invents and forgets,
no doubt finding out that life
moves on too fast.

It's not so much that she steps out
of the small body enclosing her,
but that all she carries in herself
frolics and ferments.

It's this dress that she'll remember
later in a sweet surrender;
when her whole life is full of risks,
the little red dress will always seem right.

Translated by A.

Poulin

Childhood Read Poem

It would be good to give much thought, before
you try to find words for something so lost,
for those long childhood afternoons you knew
that vanished so completely —and why?

We're still reminded—: sometimes by a rain,
but we can no longer say what it means;
life was never again so filled with meeting,
with reunion and with passing on
as back then, when nothing happened to us
except what happens to things and creatures:
we lived their world as something human,
and became filled to the brim with figures.

And became as lonely as a sheperd
and as overburdened by vast distances,
and summoned and stirred as from far away,
and slowly, like a long new thread,
introduced into that picture-sequence
where now having to go on bewilders us.

Death Read Poem

Come thou, thou last one, whom I recognize,
unbearable pain throughout this body's fabric:
as I in my spirit burned, see, I now burn in thee:
the wood that long resisted the advancing flames
which thou kept flaring, I now am nourishing
and burn in thee.

My gentle and mild being through thy ruthless fury
has turned into a raging hell that is not from here.

Quite pure, quite free of future planning, I mounted
the tangled funeral pyre built for my suffering,
so sure of nothing more to buy for future needs,
while in my heart the stored reserves kept silent.

Is it still I, who there past all recognition burn?

Memories I do not seize and bring inside.

O life! O living! O to be outside!
And I in flames.

And no one here who knows me.

[Written in December 1926, this poem was the last
entry in Rilke's notebook, less than two weeks before his
death at age 51.

]
Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

Dedication Read Poem

I have great faith in all things not yet spoken.

I want my deepest pious feelings freed.

What no one yet has dared to risk and warrant
will be for me a challenge I must meet.

If this presumptuous seems, God, may I be forgiven.

For what I want to say to you is this:
my efforts shall be like a driving force,
quite without anger, without timidness
as little children show their love for you.

With these outflowing, river-like, with deltas
that spread like arms to reach the open sea,
with the recurrent tides that never cease
will I acknowledge you, will I proclaim you
as no one ever has before.

And if this should be arrogance, so let me
arrogant be to justify my prayer
that stands so serious and so alone
before your forehead, circled by the clouds.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

Dedication To M... Read Poem

Swing of the heart.

O firmly hung, fastened on what
invisible branch.

Who, who gave you the push,
that you swung with me into the leaves?

How near I was to the exquisite fruits.

But not-staying
is the essence of this motion.

Only the nearness, only
toward the forever-too-high, all at once the possible
nearness.

Vicinities, then
from an irresistibly swung-up-to place
—already, once again, lost—the new sight, the outlook.

And now: the commanded return
back and across and into equilibrium's arms.

Below, in between, hesitation, the pull of earth, the passage
through the turning-point of the heavy—, past it: and the
catapult stretches,
weighted with the heart's curiosity,
to the other side, opposite, upward.

Again how different, how new! How they envy each other
at the ends of the rope, these opposite halves of pleasure.

Or, shall I dare it: these quarters?

—And include, since it
withholds itself,
that other half-circle, the one whose impetus pushes the
swing?

I'm not just imagining it, as the mirror of my here-and-now
arc.

Guess nothing.

It will be
newer someday.

But from endpoint to endpoint
of the arc that I have most dared, I already fully possess it:
overflowings from me plunge over to it and fill it,
stretch it apart, almost.

And my own parting,
when the force that pushes me someday
stops, makes it all the more near.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Early Spring Read Poem

Harshness vanished.

A sudden softness
has replaced the meadows' wintry grey.

Little rivulets of water changed
their singing accents.

Tendernesses,
hesitantly, reach toward the earth
from space, and country lanes are showing
these unexpected subtle risings
that find expression in the empty trees.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

Einsamkeit Read Poem

lonliness
You, my holy loneliness, are as rich and wide as a growing garden.

You my holy loneliness are so rich and wide, like a growing garden,
Du, meine heilige Einsamkeit, bist so reich und weit wie ein wachsender Garten.

You my holy loneliness are so rich and wide, like a growing garden,

Elegy I Read Poem

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies?

and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.

For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.

Each single angel is terrifying.

And so I force myself, swallow and hold back
the surging call of my dark sobbing.

Oh, to whom can we turn for help?

Not angels, not humans;
and even the knowing animals are aware that we feel
little secure and at home in our interpreted world.

There remains perhaps some tree on a hillside
daily for us to see; yesterday's street remains for us
stayed, moved in with us and showed no signs of leaving.

Oh, and the night, the night, when the wind
full of cosmic space invades our frightened faces.

Whom would it not remain for -that longed-after,
gently disenchanting night, painfully there for the
solitary heart to achieve?

Is it easier for lovers?

Don't you know yet ?

Fling out of your arms the
emptiness into the spaces we breath -perhaps the birds
will feel the expanded air in their more ferven flight.

Yes, the springtime were in need of you.

Often a star
waited for you to espy it and sense its light.

A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past,
or as you walked below an open window,
a violin gave itself to your hearing.

All this was trust.

But could you manage it?

Were you not always distraught by expectation,
as if all this were announcing the arrival
of a beloved?

(Where would you find a place
to hide her, with all your great strange thoughts
coming and going and often staying for the night.

)
When longing overcomes you, sing of women in love;
for their famous passion is far from immortal enough.

Those whom you almost envy, the abandoned and
desolate ones, whom you found so much more loving
than those gratified.

Begin ever new again
the praise you cannot attain; remember:
the hero lives on and survives; even his downfall
was for him only a pretext for achieving
his final birth.

But nature, exhausted, takes lovers
back into itself, as if such creative forces could never be
achieved a second time.

Have you thought of Gaspara Stampa sufficiently:
that any girl abandoned by her lover may feel
from that far intenser example of loving:
"Ah, might I become like her!" Should not their oldest
sufferings finally become more fruitful for us?

Is it not time that lovingly we freed ourselves
from the beloved and, quivering, endured:
as the arrow endures the bow-string's tension,
and in this tense release becomes more than itself.

For staying is nowhere.

Voices, voices.

Listen my heart, as only saints
have listened: until the gigantic call lifted them
clear off the ground.

Yet they went on, impossibly,
kneeling, completely unawares: so intense was
their listening.

Not that you could endure
the voice of God -far from it! But listen
to the voice of the wind and the ceaseless message
that forms itself out of silence.

They sweep
toward you now from those who died young.

Whenever they entered a church in Rome or Naples,
did not their fate quietly speak to you as recently
as the tablet did in Santa Maria Formosa?

What do they want of me?

to quietly remove
the appearance of suffered injustice that,
at times, hinders a little their spirits from
freely proceeding onward.

Of course, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer,
to no longer use skills on had barely time to acquire;
not to observe roses and other things that promised
so much in terms of a human future, no longer
to be what one was in infinitely anxious hands;
to even discard one's own name as easily as a child
abandons a broken toy.

Strange, not to desire to continue wishing one's wishes.

Strange to notice all that was related, fluttering
so loosely in space.

And being dead is hard work
and full of retrieving before one can gradually feel a
trace of eternity.

-Yes, but the liviing make
the mistake of drawing too sharp a distinction.

Angels (they say) are often unable to distinguish
between moving among the living or the dead.

The eternal torrent whirls all ages along with it,
through both realms forever, and their voices are lost in
its thunderous roar.

In the end the early departed have no longer
need of us.

One is gently weaned from things
of this world as a child outgrows the need
of its mother's breast.

But we who have need
of those great mysteries, we for whom grief is
so often the source of spiritual growth,
could we exist without them?

Is the legend vain that tells of music's beginning
in the midst of the mourning for Linos?

the daring first sounds of song piercing
the barren numbness, and how in that stunned space
an almost godlike youth suddenly left forever,
and the emptiness felt for the first time
those harmonious vibrations which now enrapture
and comfort and help us.

Elegy IV Read Poem

O trees of life, oh, what when winter comes?

We are not of one mind.

Are not like birds
in unison migrating.

And overtaken,
overdue, we thrust ourselves into the wind
and fall to earth into indifferent ponds.

Blossoming and withering we comprehend as one.

And somewhere lions roam, quite unaware,
in their magnificence, of any weakness.

But we, while wholly concentrating on one thing,
already feel the pressure of another.

Hatred is our first response.

And lovers,
are they not forever invading one another's
boundaries?

-although they promised space,
hunting and homeland.

Then, for a sketch
drawn at a moment's impulse, a ground of contrast
is prepared, painfully, so that we may see.

For they are most exact with us.

We do not know
the contours of our feelings.

We only know
what shapes them from the outside.

Who has not sat, afraid, before his own heart's
curtain?

It lifted and displayed the scenery
of departure.

Easy to understand.

The well-known
garden swaying just a little.

Then came the dancer.

Not he! Enough! However lightly he pretends to move:
he is just disguised, costumed, an ordinary man
who enters through the kitchen when coming home.

I will not have these half-filled human masks;
better the puppet.

It at least is full.

I will endure this well-stuffed doll, the wire,
the face that is nothing but appearance.

Here out front
I wait.

Even if the lights go down and I am told:
"There's nothing  more to come," -even if
the grayish drafts of emptiness come drifting down
from the deserted stage -even if not one
of my now silent forebears sits beside me
any longer, not a woman, not even a boy-
he with the brown and squinting eyes-:
I'll still remain.

For one can always watch.

Am I not right?

You, to whom life would taste
so bitter, Father, after you - for my sake -
slipped of mine, that first muddy infusion
of my necessity.

You kept on tasting, Father,
as I kept on growing, troubled by the aftertaste
of my so strange a future as you kept searching
my unfocused gaze -you who, so often since
you died, have been afraid for my well-being,
within my deepest hope, relinquishing that calmness,
the realms of equanimity such as the dead possess
for my so small fate -Am I not right?

And you, my parents, am I not right?

You who loved me
for that small beginning of my love for you
from which I always shyly turned away, because
the distance in your features grew, changed,
even while I loved it, into cosmic space
where you no longer were…: and when I feel
inclined to wait before the puppet stage, no,
rather to stare at is so intensely that in the end
to counter-balance my searching gaze, an angel
has to come as an actor, and begin manipulating
the lifeless bodies of the puppets to perform.

Angel and puppet! Now at last there is a play!
Then what we separate can come together by our
very presence.

And only then the entire cycle
of our own life-seasons is revealed and set in motion.

Above, beyond us, the angel plays.

Look:
must not the dying notice how unreal, how full
of pretense is all that we accomplish here, where
nothing is to be itself.

O hours of childhood,
when behind each shape more that the past lay hidden,
when that which lay before us was not the future.

We grew, of course, and sometimes were impatient
in growing up,  half for the sake of pleasing those
with nothing left but their own grown-upness.

Yet, when alone, we entertained ourselves
with what alone endures, we would stand there
in the infinite space that spans the world and toys,
upon a place, which from the first beginning
had been prepared to serve a pure event.

Who shows a child just as it stands?

Who places him
within his constellation, with the measuring-rod
of distance in his hand.

Who makes his death
from gray bread that grows hard, -or leaves
it there inside his rounded mouth, jagged as the core
of a sweet apple?

…….

The minds of murderers
are easily comprehended.

But this: to contain death,
the whole of death, even before life has begun,
to hold it all so gently within oneself,
and not be angry: that is indescribable.

Elegy X Read Poem

That some day, emerging at last from the terrifying vision
I may burst into jubilant praise to assenting angels!
That of the clear-struck keys of the heart not one may fail
to sound because of a loose, doubtful or broken string!
That my streaming countenance may make me more resplendent
That my humble weeping change into blossoms.

Oh, how will you then, nights of suffering, be remembered
with love.

Why did I not kneel more fervently, disconsolate
sisters, more bendingly kneel to receive you, more loosely
surrender myself to your loosened hair?

We, squanderers of
gazing beyond them to judge the end of their duration.

They are only our winter's foliage, our sombre evergreen,
one of the seasons of our interior year, -not only season,
but place, settlement, camp, soil and dwelling.

How woeful, strange, are the alleys of the City of Pain,
where in the false silence created from too much noise,
a thing cast out from the mold of emptiness
swaggers that gilded hubbub, the bursting memorial.

Oh, how completely an angel would stamp out their market
of solace, bounded by the church, bought ready for use:
as clean, disappointing and closed as a post office on Sunday.

Farther out, though, there are always the rippling edges
of the fair.

Seasaws of freedom! High-divers and jugglers of zeal!
And the shooting-gallery's targets of bedizened happiness:
targets tumbling in tinny contortions whenever some better
marksman happens to hit one.

From cheers to chance he goes
staggering on, as booths that can please the most curious tastes
are drumming and bawling.

For adults ony there is something
special to see: how money multiplies.

Anatomy made amusing!
Money's organs on view! Nothing concealed! Instructive,
and guaranteed to increase fertility!…
Oh, and then outside,
behind the farthest billboard, pasted with posters for 'Deathless,'
that bitter beer tasting quite sweet to drinkers,
if they chew fresh diversions with it.

.

Behind the billboard, just in back of it, life is real.

Children play, and lovers hold each other, -aside,
earnestly, in the trampled grass, and dogs respond to nature.

The youth continues onward; perhaps he is in love with
a young Lament….

he follows her into the meadows.

She says: the way is long.

We live out there….

Where?

And the youth
follows.

He is touched by her gentle bearing.

The shoulders,
the neck, -perhaps she is of noble ancestry?

Yet he leaves her, turns around, looks back and waves…
What could come of it?

She is a Lament.

Only those who died young, in their first state of
timeless serenity, while they are being weaned,
follow her lovingly.

She waits for girls
and befriends them.

Gently she shows them
what she is wearing.

Pearls of grief
and the fine-spun veils of patience.

-
With youths she walks in silence.

But there, where they live, in the valley,
an elderly Lament responds to the youth as he asks:-
We were once, she says, a great race, we Laments.

Our fathers worked the mines up there in the mountains;
sometimes among men you will find a piece of polished
primeval pain, or a petrified slag from an ancient volcano.

Yes, that came from there.

Once we were rich.

-
And she leads him gently through the vast landscape
of Lamentation, shows him the columns of temples,
the ruins of strongholds from which long ago
the princes of Lament wisely governed the country.

Shows him the tall trees of tears,
the fields of flowering sadness,
(the living know them only as softest foliage);
show him the beasts of mourning, grazing-
and sometimes a startled bird, flying straight through
their field of vision, far away traces the image of its
solitary cry.

-
At evening she leads him to the graves of elders
of the race of Lamentation, the sybils and prophets.

With night approaching, they move more softly,
and soon there looms ahead, bathed in moonlight,
the sepulcher, that all-guarding ancient stone,
Twin-brother to that on the Nile, the lofty Sphinx-:
the silent chamber's countenance.

They marvel at the regal head that has, forever silent,
laid the features of manking upon the scales of the stars.

His sight, still blinded by his early death,
cannot grasp it.

But the Sphinx's gaze
frightens an owl from the rim of the double-crown.

The bird, with slow down-strokes, brushes
along the cheek, that with the roundest curve,
and faintly inscribes on the new death-born hearing,
as though on the double page of an opened book,
the indescribable outline.

And higher up, the stars.

New ones.

Stars
of the land of pain.

Slowly she names them:
"There, look: the Rider ,the Staff,and that
crowded constellation they call the the Garland of Fruit.

Then farther up toward the Pole:
Cradle, Way, the Burning Book, Doll, Window.

And in the Southern sky, pure as lines
on the palm of a blessed hand, the clear sparkling M,
standing for Mothers….

.

"
Yet the dead  youth must go on alone.

In silence the elder Lament brings him
as far as the gorge where it shimmers in the moonlight:
The Foutainhead of Joy.

With reverance she names it,
saying: "In the world of mankind it is a life-bearing stream.

"
They reach the foothills of the mountain,
and there she embraces him, weeping.

Alone, he climbs the mountains of primeval pain.

Not even his footsteps ring from this soundless fate.

But were these timeless dead to awaken an image for us,
see, they might be pointing to th catkins, hanging
from the leafless hazels, or else they might mean
the rain that falls upon the dark earth in early Spring.

And we, who always think
of happiness as rising feel the emotion
that almost overwhelms us
whenever a happy thing falls.

Encounter In The Chestnut Avenue Read Poem

He felt the entrance's green darkness
wrapped cooly round him like a silken cloak
that he was still accepting and arranging;
when at the opposite transparent end, far off,
through green sunlight, as through green window panes,
whitely a solitary shape
flared up, long remaining distant
and then finally, the downdriving light
boiling over it at every step,
bearing on itself a bright pulsation,
which in the blond ran shyly to the back.

But suddenly the shade was deep,
and nearby eyes lay gazing
from a clear new unselfconscious face,
which, as in a portrait, lived intensely
in the instant things split off again:
first there forever, and then not at all.

Translated by Edward Snow

Eve Read Poem

Simply she stands at the cathedral’s
great ascent, close to the rose window,
with the apple in the apple-pose,
guiltless-guilty once and for all
of the growing she gave birth to
since from the circle of eternities
loving she went forth, to struggle through
her way throughout the earth like a young year.

Ah, gladly yet a little in that land
Would she have lingered, heeding the harmony
And understanding of the animals.

But since she found the man determined,
She went with him, aspiring after death,
And she had as yet hardly known God.

Evening Read Poem

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;
and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion of what becomes
a star each night, and rises;
and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Evening Love Song Read Poem

Ornamental clouds
compose an evening love song;
a road leaves evasively.

The new moon begins
a new chapter of our nights,
of those frail nights
we stretch out and which mingle
with these black horizontals.

Translated by A.

Poulin

Exposed on the cliffs of the heart Read Poem

Exposed on the cliffs of the heart.

Look, how tiny down there,
look: the last village of words and, higher,
(but how tiny) still one last
farmhouse of feeling.

Can you see it?

Exposed on the cliffs of the heart.

Stoneground
under your hands.

Even here, though,
something can bloom; on a silent cliff-edge
an unknowing plant blooms, singing, into the air.

But the one who knows?

Ah, he began to know
and is quiet now, exposed on the cliffs of the heart.

While, with their full awareness,
many sure-footed mountain animals pass
or linger.

And the great sheltered birds flies, slowly
circling, around the peak's pure denial.

- But
without a shelter, here on the cliffs of the heart…

Extinguish Thou My Eyes Read Poem

Extinguish Thou my eyes:I still can see Thee,
deprive my ears of sound:I still can hear Thee,
and without feet I still can come to Thee,
and without voice I still can call to Thee.

Sever my arms from me, I still will hold Thee
with all my heart as with a single hand,
arrest my heart, my brain will keep on beating,
and Should Thy fire at last my brain consume,
the flowing of my blood will carry Thee.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

Falconry Read Poem

A prince survives by unseen acts.

At night the chief advisor knocked
at Frederick's workroom in the tower
and found him formulating facts
for treatises on wingèd power
while his penman turned out text.

It was in this aerie room
he'd walked all night with her on arm,
turbulent and barely fledged.

Whatever plans then sprang to mind,
whatever fondness deeply chimed
in recollection he would trash
and tend the frightened and impassioned
thing he wished to understand.

Every night he made a time
for nothing but the young unhandled
animal.

It was her staring
inborn mind he'd worked to learn,
so he was lofted with her grace
when she, the bird that nobles praise,
thrown gleaming from his hand (her wingbeats raised
into the heartfelt morning air)
and diving like an angel struck the hern.

Fall Day Read Poem

Lord, it is time.

This was a very big summer.

Lay your shadows over the sundial,
and let the winds loose on the fields.

Command the last fruits to be full;
give them two more sunny days,
urge them on to fulfillment and throw
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Who has no house now, will never build one.

Whoever is alone now, will long remain so,
Will watch, read, write long letters
and will wander in the streets, here and there
restlessly, when the leaves blow.

Falling Stars Read Poem

Do you remember still the falling stars
that like swift horses through the heavens raced
and suddenly leaped across the hurdles
of our wishes—do you recall?

And we
did make so many! For there were countless numbers
of stars: each time we looked above we were
astounded by the swiftness of their daring play,
while in our hearts we felt safe and secure
watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate,
knowing somehow we had survived their fall.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

Fear of the Inexplicable Read Poem

But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverished
the existence of the individual; the relationship between
one human being and another has also been cramped by it,
as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of
endless possibilities and set down in a fallow spot on the
bank, to which nothing happens.

For it is not inertia alone
that is responsible for human relationships repeating
themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and
unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new,unforeseeable
experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope.

But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes
nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation
to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively
from his own existence.

For if we think of this existence of
the individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident
that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, a
place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and
down.

Thus they have a certain security.

And yet that dangerous
insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in
Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons
and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode.

We, however, are not prisoners.

No traps or snares are set about
us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us.

We are set down in life as in the element to which we best
correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of
years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we
hold still we are, through a happy mimicry,scarcely to be
distinguished from all that surrounds us.

We have no reason to
mistrust our world, for it is not against us.

Has it terrors,
they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abuses belong to us;
are dangers at hand, we must try to love them.

And if only we
arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us
that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now
still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust
and find most faithful.

How should we be able to forget those
ancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into
princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses
who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.

Perhaps
everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless
that wants help from us.

Fire's Reflection Read Poem

Perhaps it's no more than the fire's reflection
on some piece of gleaming furniture
that the child remembers so much later
like a revelation.

And if in his later life, one day
wounds him like so many others,
it's because he mistook some risk
or other for a promise.

Let's not forget the music, either,
that soon had hauled him
toward absence complicated
by an overflowing heart….

Translated by A.

Poulin

For Hans Carossa Read Poem

Losing too is still ours; and even forgetting
still has a shape in the kingdom of transformation.

When something's let go of, it circles; and though we are
rarely the center
of the circle, it draws around us its unbroken, marvelous
curve.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

From The Tenth Elegy Read Poem

Ah, but the City of Pain: how strange its streets are:
the false silence of sound drowning sound,
and there--proud, brazen, effluence from the mold of emptiness--
the gilded hubbub, the bursting monument.

How an Angel would stamp out their market of solaces,
set up alongside their church bought to order:
clean and closed and woeful as a post office on Sunday.

Outside, though, there's always the billowing edge of the fair.

Swings of Freedom! High-divers and Jugglers of Zeal!
And the shooting gallery with its figures of idiot Happiness
which jump, quiver, and fall with a tinny ring
whenever some better marksman scores.

Onward he lurches from cheers
to chance; for booths courting each curious taste
are drumming and barking.

And then--for adults only--
a special show: how money breeds, its anatomy, not some charade:
money's genitals, everything, the whole act
from beginning to end--educational and guaranteed to make you
virile .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Oh, but just beyond that,
behind the last of the billboards, plastered with signs for "Deathless,"
that bitter beer which tastes sweet to those drinking it
as long as they have fresh distractions to chew .

.

.

,
just beyond those boards, just on the other side: things are real.

Children play, lovers hold each other, off in the shadows,
pensive, on the meager grass, while dogs obey nature.

The youth is drawn farther on; perhaps he's fallen in love
with a young Lament .

.

.

.

.

He pursues her, enters meadowland.

She says:
"It's a long way.

We live out there .

.

.

"
Where?

And the youth follows.

Something in her bearing stirs him.

Her shoulders, neck--,
perhaps she's of noble descent.

Still, he leaves her, turns around,
glances back, waves .

.

.

What's the use?

She's a Lament.

Translated by Edward Snow

Girl in Love Read Poem

That's my window.

This minute
So gently did I alight
From sleep—was still floating in it.

Where has my life its limit
And where begins the night?

I could fancy all things around me
Were nothing but I as yet;
Like a crystal's depth, profoundly
Mute, translucent, unlit.

I have space to spare inside me
For the stars, too: so full of room
Feels my heart; so lightly
Would it let go of him, whom
For all I know I have started
To love, it may be to hold.

Strange, as if never charted,
Stares my fortune untold.

Why is it I am bedded
Beneath this infinitude,
Fragrant like a meadow,
Hither and thither moved,
Calling out, yet fearing
Someone might hear the cry,
Destined to disappearing
Within another I.

Girl's Lament Read Poem

In the years when we were
all children, this inclining
to be alone so much was gentle;
others' time passed fighting,
and one had one's faction,
one's near, one's far-off place,
a path, an animal, a picture.

And I still imagined, that life
would always keep providing
for one to dwell on things within,
Am I within myself not in what's greatest?

Shall what's mine no longer soothe
and understand me as a child?

Suddenly I'm as if cast out,
and this solitude surrounds me
as something vast and unbounded,
when my feeling, standing on the hills
of my breasts, cries out for wings
or for an end.

Translated by Edward Snow

God Speaks To Each Of Us Read Poem

God speaks to each of us before we are,
Before he's formed us — then, in cloudy speech,
But only then, he speaks these words to each
And silently walks with us from the dark:
Driven by your senses, dare
To the edge of longing.

Grow
Like a fire's shadowcasting glare
Behind assembled things, so you can spread
Their shapes on me as clothes.

Don't leave me bare.

Let it all happen to you: beauty and dread.

Simply go — no feeling is too much —
And only this way can we stay in touch.

Near here is the land
That they call Life.

You'll know when you arrive
By how real it is.

Give me your hand.

Going Blind Read Poem

She sat just like the others at the table.

But on second glance, she seemed to hold her cup
a little differently as she picked it up.

She smiled once.

It was almost painful.

And when they finished and it was time to stand
and slowly, as chance selected them, they left
and moved through many rooms (they talked and laughed),
I saw her.

She was moving far behind
the others, absorbed, like someone who will soon
have to sing before a large assembly;
upon her eyes, which were radiant with joy,
light played as on the surface of a pool.

She followed slowly, taking a long time,
as though there were some obstacle in the way;
and yet: as though, once it was overcome,
she would be beyond all walking, and would fly.

Greek Love-Talk Read Poem

What I have already learned as a lover,
I see you, beloved, learning angrily;
then for you it distantly departed,
now your destiny stands in all the stars.

Over your breasts we will together contend:
since as glowingly shining they've ripened,
so also your hands desire to touch them
and their own pleasure superintend.

Translated by John J.

L.

Mood

Growing Old Read Poem

In some summers there is so much fruit,
the peasants decide not to reap any more.

Not having reaped you, oh my days,
my nights, have I let the slow flames
of your lovely produce fall into ashes?

My nights, my days, you have borne so much!
All your branches have retained the gesture
of that long labor you are rising from:
my days, my nights.

Oh my rustic friends!
I look for what was so good for you.

Oh my lovely, half-dead trees,
could some equal sweetness still
stroke your leaves, open your calyx?

Ah, no more fruit! But one last time
bloom in fruitless blossoming
without planning, without reckoning,
as useless as the powers of millenia.

Translated by A.

Poulin

Heartbeat Read Poem

Only mouths are we.

Who sings the distant heart
which safely exists in the center of all things?

His giant heartbeat is diverted in us
into little pulses.

And his giant grief
is, like his giant jubilation, far too
great for us.

And so we tear ourselves away
from him time after time, remaining only
mouths.

But unexpectedly and secretly
the giant heartbeat enters our being,
so that we scream ——,
and are transformed in being and in countenance.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

I Am Much Too Alone In This World, Yet Not Alone Read Poem

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
enough
to truly consecrate the hour.

I am much too small in this world, yet not small
enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.

I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.

I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
never be blind or too old
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.

I want to unfold.

Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;
for there I would be dishonest, untrue.

I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everday jug,
like my mother's face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm.

I Am,you fearful one. (‘Ich bin, du Ängstlicher. Hörst du mich nicht) Read Poem

I Am, you fearful one.

('I am, you scared one.

Don't you hear me)
'I am, you scared one.

Do not you hear me
burn against you with all my senses?

My feelings that found wings
encircle your face knows.

Don't you see my soul as it closes
standing before you in a dress of silence?

Doesn't ripen my mail prayer
in your eyes as in a tree?

If you're the dreamer, I'm your dream.

But if you want to wake up, I am your will
and become powerful in all glory
and round me like a starry stillness
over the whimsical city of time.

I am, you fearful one.

Don't you hear me
with all my senses burning you?

my feelings, which have taken wings,
make white circles around your face.

do you not see my soul, which tightly
stands before you dressed in silence?

isn't my springlike prayer ripening
upon your vision like a tree?

if you are the dreamer, I am your dream;
yet when you want to wake, I am your will,
and become stronger and magnificent
and turn myself into a silent star
above the strange town of time
‘Ich bin, du Ängstlicher.

Hörst du mich nicht
mit allen meinen Sinnen an dir branden?

Meine Gefühle, welche Flügel fanden,
umkreisen weiß dein Angesicht.

Siehst du nicht meine Seele, wie sie dicht
vor dir in einem Kleid aus Stille steht?

Reift nicht mein mailiches Gebet
an deinem Blicke wie an einem Baum?

Wenn du der Träumer bist, bin ich dein Traum.

Doch wenn du wachen willst, bin ich dein Wille
und werde mächtig aller Herrlichkeit
und ründe mich wie eine Sternenstille
über der wunderlichen Stadt der Zeit.

I am, you fearful one.

Don’t you hear me
with all my senses burning you?

my feelings, which have taken wings,
make white circles around your face.

do you not see my soul, which tightly
stands  before you dressed in silence?

isn’t my springlike prayer ripening
upon your vision like a tree?

if you are the dreamer, I am your dream;
yet when you want to wake, I am your will,
and become stronger and magnificent
and turn myself into a silent star
above the strange town of time

I find you (Ich finde dich) Read Poem

I find you (I find you)
I find you in all these things
to whom I am good and like a brother;
as a seed you bask in the small ones
and in the big ones you give yourself big.

This is the wondrous play of forces
that they go through things in such a serving way:
growing in roots, waning in shafts
and in the treetops like a resurrection.

I find you in all these things:
all that is good in me and in my brothers,
like a tiny seed you bask in the sun
and in the vastness you greatly give of yourself
that is the wonderful game of power,
to move, a servant, through all things:
watching in roots, dwindling in the shafts
and in the treetops like a resurrection
Ich finde dich in allen diesen Dingen,
denen ich gut und wie ein Bruder bin;
als Samen sonnst du dich in den geringen
und in den großen giebst du groß dich hin.

Das ist das wundersame Spiel der Kräfte,
dass sie so dienend durch die Dinge gehn:
in Wurzeln wachsend, schwindend in die Schäfte
und in den Wipfeln wie ein Auferstehn.

I find you in all these things:
all that is good in me and in my brothers,
like a tiny seed you bask in the sun
and in the vastness you greatly give of yourself
that is the wonderful game of power,
to move, a servant, through all things:
watching in roots, dwindling in the shafts
and in the treetops like a resurrection

Ignorant Before The Heavens Of My Life Read Poem

Ignorant before the heavens of my life,
I stand and gaze in wonder.

Oh the vastness
of the stars.

Their rising and descent.

How still.

As if I didn't exist.

Do I have any
share in this?

Have I somehow dispensed with
their pure effect?

Does my blood's ebb and flow
change with their changes?

Let me put aside
every desire, every relationship
except this one, so that my heart grows used to
its farthest spaces.

Better that it live
fully aware, in the terror of its stars, than
as if protected, soothed by what is near.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

In The Beginning Read Poem

Ever since those wondrous days of Creation
our Lord God sleeps: we are His sleep.

And He accepted this in His indulgence,
resigned to rest among the distant stars.

Our actions stopped Him from reacting,
for His fist-tight hand is numbed by sleep,
and the times brought in the age of heroes
during which our dark hearts plundered Him.

Sometimes He appears as if tormented,
and His body jerks as if plagued by pain;
but these spells are always outweighed by the
number of His countless other worlds.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

Interior Portrait Read Poem

You don't survive in me
because of memories;
nor are you mine because
of a lovely longing's strength.

What does make you present
is the ardent detour
that a slow tenderness
traces in my blood.

I do not need
to see you appear;
being born sufficed for me
to lose you a little less.

Translated by A.

Poulin

Lady At A Mirror Read Poem

As in sleeping-drink spices
softly she loosens in the liquid-clear
mirror her fatigued demeanor;
and she puts her smile deep inside.

And she waits while the liquid
rises from it; then she pours her hair
into the mirror, and, lifting one
wondrous shoulder from the evening gown,
she drinks quietly from her image.

She drinks
what a lover would drink feeling dazed,
searching it, full of mistrust; and she only
beckons to her maid when at the bottom
of her mirror she finds candles, wardrobes,
and the cloudy dregs of a late hour.

Translated by Edward Snow

Lady On A Balcony Read Poem

Suddenly she steps, wrapped into the wind,
brightly into brightness, as if singled out,
while now the room as though cut to fit
behind her fills the door
darkly like the ground of cameo,
that lets a glimmer through at the edges;
and you think the evening wasn't there
before she stepped out, and on the railing
set forth just a little of herself,
just her hands, —to be completely light:
as if passed on by the rows of houses
to the heavens, to be swayed by everything.

Translated by Edward Snow

Lament Read Poem

Everything is far
and long gone by.

I think that the star
glittering above me
has been dead for a million years.

I think there were tears
in the car I heard pass
and something terrible was said.

A clock has stopped striking in the house
across the road…
When did it start?

…
I would like to step out of my heart
an go walking beneath the enormous sky.

I would like to pray.

And surely of all the stars that perished
long ago,
one still exists.

I think that I know
which one it is—
which one, at the end of its beam in the sky,
stands like a white city…

Lament (O how all things are far removed) Read Poem

O how all things are far removed
and long have passed away.

I do believe the star,
whose light my face reflects,
is dead and has been so
for many thousand years.

I had a vision of a passing boat
and heard some voices saying disquieting things.

I heard a clock strike in some distant house…
but in which house?

…
I long to quiet my anxious heart
and stand beneath the sky's immensity.

I long to pray…
And one of all the stars
must still exist.

I do believe that I would know
which one alone
endured,
and which like a white city stands
at the ray's end shining in the heavens.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

Lament (Whom will you cry to, heart?) Read Poem

Whom will you cry to, heart?

More and more lonely,
your path struggles on through incomprehensible
mankind.

All the more futile perhaps
for keeping to its direction,
keeping on toward the future,
toward what has been lost.

Once.

You lamented?

What was it?

A fallen berry
of jubilation, unripe.

But now the whole tree of my jubilation
is breaking, in the storm it is breaking, my slow
tree of joy.

Loveliest in my invisible
landscape, you that made me more known
to the invisible angels.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Letzer Abend (Last Evening) Read Poem

Last evening (Last evening)
Last evening
(From Mrs.

Nonna's possession)
And night and distant driving; because the train
of the whole army passed the park.

But he looked up from the clavecin
and was still playing and looking over at her
almost like looking in a mirror:
so filled with his young features
and knowing how to deceive his grief,
beautiful and more seductive with every sound.

But suddenly it was as if that were blurring:
she stood laboriously in the window niche
and stopped the beating of the heart.

His game gave way.

Freshness blew from outside.

And strangely strange stood on the mirror table
the black shako with the skull.

Last evening
(The property of Mrs.

Nonnas)
And night and distant travel, then the train
carrying all the troops off to their base.

He looked up for a moment from the harpsichord
and played again as his gaze fell on her.

Almost as how one looks into a mirror
so deeply filled with his young features
and knew she felt his pain but was deceived
by the beauty of each misleading chord.

Then suddenly this dream was wiped away:
troubled, she stood in the embrasure of the window,
and felt the violent throbbing of her heart.

His playing stopped.

Outside, the wind blew fresh.

And something strange stood on the mirror-table,
the black shako with its skull.

Letzter Abend
(Aus dem Besitze Frau Nonnas)
Und Nacht und fernes Fahren; denn der Train
des ganzen Heeres zog am Park vorüber.

Er aber hob den Blick vom Clavecin
und spielte noch und sah zu ihr hinüber
beinah wie man in einen Spiegel schaut:
so sehr erfüllt von seinen jungen Zügen
und wissend, wie sie seine Trauer trügen,
schön und verführender bei jedem Laut.

Doch plötzlich wars, als ob sich das verwische:
sie stand wie mühsam in der Fensternische
und hielt des Herzens drängendes Geklopf.

Sein Spiel gab nach.

Von draußen wehte Frische.

Und seltsam fremd stand auf dem Spiegeltische
der schwarze Tschako mit dem Totenkopf.

Last Evening
(The property of Frau Nonnas)
And night and distant travel, then the train
carrying all the troops off to their base.

He looked up for a moment from the harpsichord
and played again as his gaze fell on her.

Almost as how one looks into a mirror
so deeply filled with his young features
and knew she felt his pain but was deceived
by the beauty of each misleading chord.

Then suddenly this dream was wiped away:
troubled, she stood in the embrasure of the window,
and felt the violent throbbing of her heart.

His playing stopped.

Outside, the wind blew fresh.

And something strange stood on the mirror-table,
the black shako with its skull.

Little Tear-Vase Read Poem

Other vessels hold wine, other vessels hold oil
inside the hollowed-out vault circumscribed by their clay.

I, as smaller measure, and as the slimmest of all,
humbly hollow myself so that just a few tears can fill me.

Wine becomes richer, oil becomes clear, in its vessel.

What happens with tears?

-They made me blind in my
glass,
made me heavy and made my curve iridescent,
made me brittle, and left me empty at last.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Loneliness Read Poem

Being apart and lonely is like rain.

It climbs toward evening from the ocean plains;
from flat places, rolling and remote, it climbs
to heaven, which is its old abode.

And only when leaving heaven drops upon the city.

It rains down on us in those twittering
hours when the streets turn their faces to the dawn,
and when two bodies who have found nothing,
dissapointed and depressed, roll over;
and when two people who despise each other
have to sleep together in one bed-
that is when loneliness receives the rivers…

Losing Read Poem

Losing too is still ours; and even forgetting
still has a shape in the kingdom of transformation.

When something's let go of, it circles; and though we are
rarely the center
of the circle, it draws around us its unbroken, marvelous
curve.

Love Song Read Poem

How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn't touch your soul?

How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?

I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.

Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws one voice out of two separate strings.

Upon what instrument are we two spanned?

And what musician holds us in his hand?

Oh sweetest song.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Moving Forward Read Poem

The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.

It seems that things are more like me now,
That I can see farther into paintings.

I feel closer to what language can't reach.

With my senses, as with birds, I climb
into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
in the ponds broken off from the sky
my falling sinks, as if standing on fishes.

Music Read Poem

Take me by the hand;
it's so easy for you, Angel,
for you are the road
even while being immobile.

You see, I'm scared no one
here will look for me again;
I couldn't make use of
whatever was given,
so they abandoned me.

At first the solitude
charmed me like a prelude,
but so much music wounded me.

Translated by A.

Poulin

My Life Read Poem

My whole life is mine, but whoever says so
will deprive me, for it is infinite.

The ripple of water, the shade of the sky
are mine; it is still the same, my life.

No desire opens me: I am full,
I never close myself with refusal-
in the rhythm of my daily soul
I do not desire-I am moved;
by being moved I exert my empire,
making the dreams of night real:
into my body at the bottom of the water
I attract the beyonds of mirrors.

.

.

Narcissus Read Poem

Encircled by her arms as by a shell,
she hears her being murmur,
while forever he endures
the outrage of his too pure image…
Wistfully following their example,
nature re-enters herself;
contemplating its own sap, the flower
becomes too soft, and the boulder hardens…
It's the return of all desire that enters
toward all life embracing itself from afar…
Where does it fall?

Under the dwindling
surface, does it hope to renew a center?

Night (O you whose countenance) Read Poem

Night.

O you whose countenance, dissolved
in deepness, hovers above my face.

You who are the heaviest counterweight
to my astounding contemplation.

Night, that trembles as reflected in my eyes,
but in itself strong;
inexhaustible creation, dominant,
enduring beyond the earth's endurance;
Night, full of newly created stars that leave
trails of fire streaming from their seams
as they soar in inaudible adventure
through interstellar space:
how, overshadowed by your all-embracing vastness,
I appear minute!—-
Yet, being one with the ever more darkening earth,
I dare to be in you.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

Night (This night, agitated by the growing storm) Read Poem

This night, agitated by the growing storm,
how it has suddenly expanded its dimensions—,
that ordinarily would have gone unnoticed,
like a cloth folded, and hidden in the folds of time.

Where the stars give resistance it does not stop there,
neither does it begin within the forest's depths,
nor show upon the surface of my face
nor with your appearance.

The lamps keep swaying, fully unaware:
is our light lying?

Is night the only reality
that has endured through thousands of years?

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

On Hearing Of A Death Read Poem

We lack all knowledge of this parting.

Death
does not deal with us.

We have no reason
to show death admiration, love or hate;
his mask of feigned tragic lament gives us
a false impression.

The world's stage is still
filled with roles which we play.

While we worry
that our performances may not please,
death also performs, although to no applause.

But as you left us, there broke upon this stage
a glimpse of reality, shown through the slight
opening through which you disappeared: green,
evergreen, bathed in sunlight, actual woods.

We keep on playing, still anxious, our difficult roles
declaiming, accompanied by matching gestures
as required.

But your presence so suddenly
removed from our midst and from our play, at times
overcomes us like a sense of that other
reality: yours, that we are so overwhelmed
and play our actual lives instead of the performance,
forgetting altogether the applause.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

On the Edge of Night Read Poem

My room and this vastness,
awake over parroting land, -
are one.

I am a string,
strung over rustling wide
resonances.

The things are violin bodies,
full of grumbling dark;
inside the wifes' weeping is dreaming,
inside the rancour of whole dynasties
is stirring in the sleep…
I shall
shake silverly: then
everything underneath me will live,
and what errs in the things,
will strive after the light,
which falls from my dancing tone,
around which heaven waves,
through narrow, yearning cracks,
into the old
endless chasms.

.

.

translated from the German:
Am Rande der Nacht
Meine Stube und diese Weite,
wach über nachbetendem Land, -
ist Eines.

Ich bin eine Saite,
über rauschende breite
Resonanzen gespannt.

Die Dinge sind Geigenleiber,
von murrendem Dunkel voll;
drin träumt das Weinen der Weiber,
drin rührt sich im Schlafe der Groll
ganzer Geschlechter.

.

.

.

.

Ich soll
silbern erzittern: dann wird
Alles unter mir leben,
und was in den Dingen irrt,
wird nach dem Lichte streben,
das von meinem tanzenden Tone,
um welchen der Himmel wellt,
durch schmale, schmachtende Spalten
in die alten
Abgründe ohne
Ende fällt.

.

.

R.

M.

Rilke, 12.

Januar 1900, Berlin-Schmargendorf

Palm Read Poem

Interior of the hand.

Sole that has come to walk
only on feelings.

That faces upward
and in its mirror
receives heavenly roads, which travel
along themselves.

That has learned to walk upon water
when it scoops,
that walks upon wells,
transfiguring every path.

That steps into other hands,
changes those that are like it
into a landscape:
wanders and arrives within them,
fills them with arrival.

Parting Read Poem

How I have felt that thing that's called 'to part',
and feel it still: a dark, invincible,
cruel something by which what was joined so well
is once more shown, held out, and torn apart.

In what defenceless gaze at that I've stood,
which, as it, calling to me, let me go,
stayed there, as though it were all womanhood,
yet small and white and nothing more than, oh,
waving, now already unrelated
to me, a sight, continuing wave,—scarce now
explainable: perhaps a plum-tree bough
some perching cuckoo's hastily vacated.

Translated by J.

B.

Leishman

Piano Practice Read Poem

The summer hums.

The afternoon fatigues;
she breathed her crisp white dress distractedly
and put into it that sharply etched etude
her impatience for a reality
that could come: tomorrow, this evening—,
that perhaps was there, was just kept hidden;
and at the window, tall and having everything,
she suddenly could feel the pampered park.

With that she broke off; gazed outside, locked
her hands together; wished for a long book—
and in a burst of anger shoved back
the jasmine scent.

She found it sickened her.

Translated by Edward Snow

Pont Du Carrousel Read Poem

That blind man by the bridge, who is as gray
As a forgotten country's boundary stone,
Might be the thing most constant and alone
Around which stars are turning far away:
A centerpoint in isolate repose,
While all about him postures, strays, and flows.

Perhaps he shows a pathway to the just,
Beside which other paths look snarled and curled,
Or keeps an entrance to the underworld,
Invisible in superficial dust.

Portrait of my Father as a Young Man Read Poem

In the eyes: dream.

The brow as if it could feel
something far off.

Around the lips, a great
freshness—seductive, though there is no smile.

Under the rows of ornamental braid
on the slim Imperial officer's uniform:
the saber's basket-hilt.

Both hands stay
folded upon it, going nowhere, calm
and now almost invisible, as if they
were the first to grasp the distance and dissolve.

And all the rest so curtained within itself,
so cloudy, that I cannot understand
this figure as it fades into the background—.

Oh quickly disappearing photograph
in my more slowly disappearing hand.

Put Out My Eyes Read Poem

Put out my eyes, and I can see you still,
Slam my ears to, and I can hear you yet;
And without any feet can go to you;
And tongueless, I can conjure you at will.

Break off my arms, I shall take hold of you
And grasp you with my heart as with a hand;
Arrest my heart, my brain will beat as true;
And if you set this brain of mine afire,
Then on my blood-stream I yet will carry you.

Rememberance Read Poem

And you wait, keep waiting for that one thing
which would infinitely enrich your life:
the powerful, uniquely uncommon,
the awakening of dormant stones,
depths that would reveal you to yourself.

In the dusk you notice the book shelves
with their volumes in gold and in brown;
and you think of far lands you journeyed,
of pictures and of shimmering gowns
worn by women you conquered and lost.

And it comes to you all of a sudden:
That was it! And you arise, for you are
aware of a year in your distant past
with its fears and events and prayers.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

Sacrifice Read Poem

How my body blooms from every vein
more fragrantly, since you appeared to me;
look, I walk slimmer now and straighter,
and all you do is wait-:who are you then?

Look: I feel how I'm moving away,
how I'm shedding my old life, leaf by leaf.

Only your smile spreads like sheer stars
over you and, soon now, over me.

Whatever shines through my childhood years
still nameless and gleaming like water,
I will name after you at the altar,
which is blazing brightly from your hair
and braided gently with your breasts.

Translated by Edward Snow

Self-Portrait Read Poem

The steadfastness of generations of nobility
shows in the curving lines that form the eyebrows.

And the blue eyes still show traces of childhood fears
and of humility here and there, not of a servant's,
yet of one who serves obediently, and of a woman.

The mouth formed as a mouth, large and accurate,
not given to long phrases, but to express
persuasively what is right.

The forehead without guile
and favoring the shadows of quiet downward gazing.

This, as a coherent whole, only casually observed;
never as yet tried in suffering or succeeding,
held together for an enduring fulfillment,
yet so as if for times to come, out of these scattered things,
something serious and lasting were being planned.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

Sense Of Something Coming Read Poem

I am like a flag in the center of open space.

I sense ahead the wind which is coming, and must live
it through.

while the things of the world still do not move:
the doors still close softly, and the chimneys are full
of silence,
the windows do not rattle yet, and the dust still lies down.

I already know the storm, and I am troubled as the sea.

I leap out, and fall back,
and throw myself out, and am absolutely alone
in the great storm.

Translated by Robert Bly

Slumber Song Read Poem

Some day, if I should ever lose you,
will you be able then to go to sleep
without me softly whispering above you
like night air stirring in the linden tree?

Without my waking here and watching
and saying words as tender as eyelids
that come to rest weightlessly upon your breast,
upon your sleeping limbs, upon your lips?

Without my touching you and leaving you
alone with what is yours, like a summer garden
that is overflowing with masses
of Melissa and star-anise?

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

Solemn Hour Read Poem

Whoever now weeps somewhere in the world,
weeps without reason in the world,
weeps over me.

Whoever now laughs somewhere in the night,
laughs without reason in the night,
laughs at me.

Whoever now wanders somewhere in the world,
wanders without reason out in the world,
wanders toward me.

Whoever now dies somewhere in the world,
dies without reason in the world,
looks at me.

Song Read Poem

You, whom I do not tell that all night long
I lie weeping,
whose very being makes me feel wanting
like a cradle.

You, who do not tell me, that you lie awake
thinking of me:—
what, if we carried all these longings within us
without ever being overwhelmed by them,
letting them pass?

Look at these lovers, tormented by love,
when first they begin confessing,
how soon they lie!
You make me feel alone.

I try imagining:
one moment it is you, then it's the soaring wind;
a fragrance comes and goes but never lasts.

Oh, within my arms I lost all whom I loved!
Only you remain, always reborn again.

For since I never held you, I hold you fast.

(From the diaries of Malte Laurids Brigge)
Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

Song Of The Orphan Read Poem

I am no one and never will be anyone,
for I am far too small to claim to be;
not even later.

Mothers and Fathers,
take pity on me.

I fear it will not pay to raise me:
I shall fall victim to the mower's scythe.

No one can find me useful now: I am too young,
and tomorrow will be too late.

I only have one dress,
worn thin and faded,
but it will last an eternity
even before God, perhaps.

I only have this wispy hair
(that always remained the same)
yet once was someone's dearest love.

Now he has nothing that he loves.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

Song Of The Sea Read Poem

Timeless sea breezes,
sea-wind of the night:
you come for no one;
if someone should wake,
he must be prepared
how to survive you.

Timeless sea breezes,
that for aeons have
blown ancient rocks,
you are purest space
coming from afar…
Oh, how a fruit-bearing
fig tree feels your coming
high up in the moonlight.

(Capri, Piccola Marina)
Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

Song Of The Women To The Poet Read Poem

We're perfect for you — bliss beyond your dreams —
Just look: The blood and darkness in a beast
Evolved in us especially to be soul,
And screams for you, just as a soul should scream.

It yearns for service by the mystery priest
And strains for utter absence of control.

We showed you the unfolding of our scream
But really you're so mild that we could die.

Your placid lack of craving makes you seem
Like someone watching clouds pass in the sky.

Are you the one?

The one the scream was for
Must be a god — is yours the Voice we miss?

It makes the boundless audible, and more,
Its every word informs us we exist.

Spanish Dancer Read Poem

As in one's hand a lighted match blinds you before
it comes aflame and sends out brilliant flickering
tongues to every side — so, within the ring of the
spectators, her dance begins in hasty, heated rhythms
and spreads itself darting flames around.

And suddenly the dance is altogether flame!
With a fierce glance she sets her hair alight.

Unexpectedly she turns with daring artfulness
the swirling flounces of her dress within this
conflagration, out of which her upheld naked arms,
clapping the castanets, appear like serpents striking.

And then, afraid her fire were diminishing,
she gathers it all up and flings it down
with an imperious haughtily gesture, and watches
as it lies there writhing on the ground, unyielding
and unwilling to concede the dance has ended.

Yet she show victory in her sweet swift smile
as she lifts up her face, while with her small firm feet
she stamps out the last of the dying embers.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

Sunset Read Poem

Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.

You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth.

leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so hopelessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs-
leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.

Telling You All Read Poem

Telling you all would take too long.

Besides, we read in the Bible
how the good is harmful
and how misfortune is good.

Let's invite something new
by unifying our silences;
if, then and there, we advance,
we'll know it soon enough.

And yet towards evening,
when his memory is persistent,
one belated curiousity
stops him before the mirror.

We don't know if he is frightened.

But he stays, he is engrossed,
and, facing his reflection,
transports himself somewhere else.

The Alchemist Read Poem

He capped a flask and hissed a quiet curse —
Bleakly smiling, tapped a switch to bleed
A pressure vessel.

(Clearly what he needs,
To manufacture his own Universe,
Is time — not years — millennia of time
And funding ready to withstand the strain
Of a black hole.

He needs stars in his brain
And something like the ocean in his mind.

)
A project which, at length, had gripped his thinking
That final night he jettisoned — he gave
It back to God.

(Clearly the scale was wrong!)
Muttering like one who has been drinking
He slumped upon his record safe and craved
The simple chunk of gold there all along.

The Apple Orchard Read Poem

Come let us watch the sun go down
and walk in twilight through the orchard's green.

Does it not seem as if we had for long
collected, saved and harbored within us
old memories?

To find releases and seek
new hopes, remembering half-forgotten joys,
mingled with darkness coming from within,
as we randomly voice our thoughts aloud
wandering beneath these harvest-laden trees
reminiscent of Durer woodcuts, branches
which, bent under the fully ripened fruit,
wait patiently, trying to outlast, to
serve another season's hundred days of toil,
straining, uncomplaining, by not breaking
but succeeding, even though the burden
should at times seem almost past endurance.

Not to falter! Not to be found wanting!
Thus must it be, when willingly you strive
throughout a long and uncomplaining life,
committed to one goal: to give yourself!
And silently to grow and to bear fruit.

The Blindman's Song Read Poem

I am blind, you outsiders.

It is a curse,
a contradiction, a tiresome farce,
and every day I despair.

I put my hand on the arm of my wife
(colorless hand on colorless sleeve)
and she walks me through empty air.

You push and shove and think that you've been
sounding different from stone against stone,
but you are mistaken: I alone
live and suffer and howl.

In me there is an endless outcry
and I can't tell what's crying, whether its my
broken heart or my bowels.

Are the tunes familiar?

You don't sing them like this:
how could you understand?

Each morning the sunlight comes into your house,
and you welcome it as a friend.

And you know what it's like to see face-to-face;
and that tempts you to be kind.

The Donor Read Poem

They put you in the picture if you pay.

So even if you didn't see the Savior,
And even if the holy bishop's hand
Didn't guide you in devout behavior
(Kneeling, near the border, looking bland),
In the painting it appeared that way.

That could be the main thing: just to kneel,
So kneeling is the only thing you feel,
So that you keep your self-willed shapes contained
Inside of you, like horses tightly reined,
And find the grace not to expand and steal
The scene.

So if enormity takes place,
Something outside the scope of what you learn,
It might just overlook you, cloaked in grace,
And might come near, absorbed with its concerns,
So close you see a thought rise in its face.

The Flamingos Read Poem

Jardin des Plantes, Paris
In these Fragonard-like mirrorings
no more of their white and pink
is proffered than if a man
said of his mistress:  "So soft
she was with sleep.

"  Then stepping up into the grass,
and standing, slightly turned, on pink stems,
blossoming together, as in a flowerbed,
they seduce themselves more seductively than
Phryne herself; and then, extending their necks,
burrow the paleness of their eyes into their own softness,
in which black and fruit-red lies hidden.

Immediately shrieks of jealousy go through the aviary;
but already, astonished, they have stretched themselves
and stride off one by one into the imaginary.

Die Flamingos (Original German)
Jardin des Plantes, Paris
In spiegelbildern wie von Fragonard
ist doch von ihrem Weiß und ihre Röte
nicht mehr gegeben, als dir einer böte,
wenn er von seiner Freudin sagt: sie war
noch sanft von Schlaf.

Denn steigen sie ins Grüne
und stehn, auf rosa Stielen leicht gedreht,
beisammen, blühend, wie in einem Beet,
verführen sie verführender als Phryne
sich selber; bis sie ihres Auges Bleiche
hinhalsend bergen in der eignen Weiche,
in welcher Schwarz und Fruchtrot sich versteckt.

Auf einmal kreischt ein Neid durch die Voliere;
sie aber haben sich erstaunt gestreckt
und schreiten einzeln ins Imaginäre.

The Future Read Poem

The future: time's excuse
to frighten us; too vast
a project, too large a morsel
for the heart's mouth.

Future, who won't wait for you?

Everyone is going there.

It suffices you to deepen
the absence that we are.

Translated by A.

Poulin

The Grown-Up Read Poem

All this stood upon her and was the world
and stood upon her with all its fear and grace
as trees stand, growing straight up, imageless
yet wholly image, like the Ark of God,
and solemn, as if imposed upon a race.

As she endured it all: bore up under
the swift-as-flight, the fleeting, the far-gone,
the inconceivably vast, the still-to-learn,
serenely as a woman carrying water
moves with a full jug.

Till in the midst of play,
transfiguring and preparing for the future,
the first white veil descended, gliding softly
over her opened face, almost opaque there,
never to be lifted off again, and somehow
giving to all her questions just one answer:
In you, who were a child once-in you.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

The Last Evening Read Poem

And night and distant rumbling; now the army's
carrier-train was moving out, to war.

He looked up from the harpsichord, and as
he went on playing, he looked across at her
almost as one might gaze into a mirror:
so deeply was her every feature filled
with his young features, which bore his pain and were
more beautiful and seductive with each sound.

Then, suddenly, the image broke apart.

She stood, as though distracted, near the window
and felt the violent drum-beats of her heart.

His playing stopped.

From outside, a fresh wind blew.

And strangely alien on the mirror-table
stood the black shack with its ivory skull.

`
Translated by Stephen Mitchell

The Last Supper Read Poem

They are assembled, astonished and disturbed
round him, who like a sage resolved his fate,
and now leaves those to whom he most belonged,
leaving and passing by them like a stranger.

The loneliness of old comes over him
which helped mature him for his deepest acts;
now will he once again walk through the olive grove,
and those who love him still will flee before his sight.

To this last supper he has summoned them,
and (like a shot that scatters birds from trees)
their hands draw back from reaching for the loaves
upon his word: they fly across to him;
they flutter, frightened, round the supper table
searching for an escape.

But he is present
everywhere like an all-pervading twilight-hour.

[On seeing Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper", Milan 1904.

]
Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

The Lovers Read Poem

See how in their veins all becomes spirit;
into each other they mature and grow.

Like axles, their forms tremblingly orbit,
round which it whirls, bewitching and aglow.

Thirsters, and they receive drink,
watchers, and see: they receive sight.

Let them into one another sink
so as to endure each other outright.

Translated by John J.

L.

Mood

The Neighbor Read Poem

Strange violin, why do you follow me?

In how many foreign cities did you
speak of your lonely nights and those of mine.

Are you being played by hundreds?

Or by one?

Do in all great cities men exist
who tormented and in deep despair
would have sought the river but for you?

And why does your playing always reach me?

Why is it that I am always neighbor
to those lost ones who are forced to sing
and to say: Life is infinitely heavier
than the heaviness of all things.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

The Panther Read Poem

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else.

It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly—.

An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

The Poet Read Poem

O hour of my muse: why do you leave me,
Wounding me by the wingbeats of your flight?

Alone: what shall I use my mouth to utter?

How shall I pass my days?

And how my nights?

I have no one to love.

I have no home.

There is no center to sustain my life.

All things to which I give myself grow rich
and leave me spent, impoverished, alone.

The Sisters Read Poem

Look how the same possibilities
unfold in their opposite demeanors,
as though one saw different ages
passing through two identical rooms.

Each thinks that she props up the other,
while resting wearily on her support;
and they can't make use of one another,
for they cause blood to rest on blood,
when as in the former times they softly touch
and try, along the tree-lined walks,
to feel themselves conducted and to lead;
ah, the ways they go are not the same.

The Song Of The Beggar Read Poem

I am always going from door to door,
whether in rain or heat,
and sometimes I will lay my right ear in
the palm of my right hand.

And as I speak my voice seems strange as if
it were alien to me,
for I'm not certain whose voice is crying:
mine or someone else's.

I cry for a pittance to sustain me.

The poets cry for more.

In the end I conceal my entire face
and cover both my eyes;
there it lies in my hands with all its weight
and looks as if at rest,
so no one may think I had no place where-
upon to lay my head.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

The Song Of The Blindman Read Poem

I am blind, you out there — that is a curse,
against one's will, a contradiction,
a heavy daily burden.

I lay my hand on the arm of my wife,
my grey hand upon her greyer grey,
as she guides me through empty spaces.

You move about and stir, and imagine
your sounds differing from stone to stone.

But you are mistaken: I alone
live and suffer and complain, for
in me is an endless crying,
and I do not know whether it is
my heart that cries or my bowels.

Do you recognize these songs?

You never sang them,
not quite with this intonation.

For you every morning brings its new light
warm through your open windows.

And you have the feeling from face to face
that tempts you to be indulgent.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

The Song of the Drunkard (Das Lied des Trinkers) Read Poem

it wasn’t in me.

it went in and out.

I wanted to hold it.

it held, with the wine.

(I no longer know what it was.

)
then wine held this and that for me
till I could never leave him completely.

I am a fool.

now I play in his game and he shakes me out,
looking at me disdainfully and perhaps today
he will lose me to death – that brute!
if he wins me, the dirtiest card in the pack,
he’ll use me to scratch his scabs
and throw me away into the muck.

------
Es war nicht in mir.

Es ging aus und ein.

Da wollt ich es halten.

Da hielt es der Wein.

(Ich weiß nicht mehr was es war.

)
Dann hielt er mir jenes und hielt mir dies
bis ich mich ganz auf ihn verließ.

Ich Narr.

Jetzt bin ich in seinem Spiel und er streut
mich verächtlich herum und verliert mich noch heut
an dieses Vieh, an den Tod.

Wenn der mich, schmutzige Karte, gewinnt,
so kratzt er mit mir seinen grauen Grind
und wirft mich fort in den Kot.

The Song Of The Widow Read Poem

In the beginning life was good to me;
it held me warm and gave me courage.

That this is granted all while in their youth,
how could I then have known of this.

I never knew what living was——.

But suddenly it was just year on year,
no more good, no more new, no more wonderful.

Life had been torn in two right down the middle.

That was not his fault nor mine
since both of us had nothing but patience;
but death has none.

I saw him coming (how rotten he looked),
and I watched him as he took and took:
and nothing was mine.

What, then, belonged to me; was mine, my own?

Was not even this utter wretchedness
on loan to me by fate?

Fate does not only claim your happiness,
it also wants your pain back and your tears
and buys the ruin as something useless, old.

Fate was present and acquired for a nothing
every expression my face is capable of,
even to the way I walk.

The daily diminishing of me went on
and after I was emptied fate gave me up
and left me standing there, abandoned.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: I Read Poem

Breathing: you invisible poem! Complete
interchange of our own
essence with world-space.

You counterweight
in which I rhythmically happen.

Single wave-motion whose
gradual sea I am:
you, most inclusive of all our possible seas-
space has grown warm.

How many regions in space have already been
inside me.

There are winds that seem like
my wandering son.

Do you recognize me, air, full of places I once absorbed?

You who were the smooth bark,
roundness, and leaf of my words.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: VI Read Poem

Rose, you majesty-once, to the ancients, you were
just a calyx with the simplest of rims.

But for us, you are the full, the numberless flower,
the inexhaustible countenance.

In your wealth you seem to be wearing gown upon gown
upon a body of nothing but light;
yet each separate petal is at the same time the negation
of all clothing and the refusal of it.

Your fragrance has been calling its sweetest names
in our direction, for hundreds of years;
suddenly it hangs in the air like fame.

Even so, we have never known what to call it; we guess…
And memory is filled with it unawares
which we prayed for from hours that belong to us.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: XIII Read Poem

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.

For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it all will your heart survive.

Be forever dead in Eurydice-more gladly arise
into the seamless life proclaimed in your song.

Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days,
be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.

Be-and yet know the great void where all things begin,
the infinite source of your own most intense vibration,
so that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent.

To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb
creatures in the world's full reserve, the unsayable sums,
joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: XXIII Read Poem

Call to me to the one among your moments
that stands against you, ineluctably:
intimate as a dog's imploring glance
but, again, forever, turned away
when you think you've captured it at last.

What seems so far from you is most your own.

We are already free, and were dismissed
where we thought we soon would be at home.

Anxious, we keep longing for a foothold-
we, at times too young for what is old
and too old for what has never been;
doing justice only where we praise,
because we are the branch, the iron blade,
and sweet danger, ripening from within.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

The Sonnets To Orpheus: I Read Poem

A tree ascended there.

Oh pure transcendence!
Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear!
And all things hushed.

Yet even in that silence
a new beginning, beckoning, change appeared.

Creatures of stillness crowded from the bright
unbound forest, out of their lairs and nests;
and it was not from any dullness, not
from fear, that they were so quiet in themselves,
but from just listening.

Bellow, roar, shriek
seemed small inside their hearts.

And where there had been
at most a makeshift hut to receive the music,
a shelter nailed up out of their darkest longing,
with an entryway that shuddered in the wind-
you built a temple deep inside their hearing.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

The Sonnets To Orpheus: IV Read Poem

O you tender ones, walk now and then
into the breath that blows coldly past,
Upon your cheeks let it tremble and part;
behind you it will tremble together again.

O you blessed ones, you who are whole,
you who seem the beginning of hearts,
bows for the arrows and arrows' targets—
tear-bright, your lips more eternally smile.

Don't be afraid to suffer; return
that heaviness to the earth's own weight;
heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.

Even the small trees you planted as children
have long since become too heavy; you could not
carry them now.

But the winds…But the spaces….

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

The Sonnets To Orpheus: X Read Poem

You who are close to my heart always,
I welcome you, ancient coffins of stone,
which the cheerful water of Roman days
still flows through, like a wandering song.

Or those other ones that are open wide
like the eyes of a happily waking shepard
-with silence and bee-suck nettle inside,
from which ecstatic butterflies flittered;
everything that has been wrestled from doubt
I welcome-the mouths that burst open after
long knowledge of what it is to be mute.

Do we know this, my friends, or don't we know this?

Both are formed by the hesitant hour
in the deep calm of the human face.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

The Sonnets To Orpheus: XIX Read Poem

Though the world keeps changing its form
as fast as a cloud, still
what is accomplished falls home
to the Primeval.

Over the change and the passing,
larger and freer,
soars your eternal song,
god with the lyre.

Never has grief been possessed,
never has love been learned,
and what removes us in death
is not revealed.

Only the song through the land
hallows and heals.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

The Sonnets To Orpheus: XXV Read Poem

But you now, dear girl, whom I loved like a flower whose
name
I didn't know, you who so early were taken away:
I will once more call up your image and show it to them,
beautiful companion of the unsubduable cry.

Dancer whose body filled with your hesitant fate,
pausing, as though your young flesh had been cast in bronze;
grieving and listening—.

Then, from the high dominions,
unearthly music fell into your altered heart.

Already possessed by shadows, with illness near,
your blood flowed darkly; yet, though for a moment
suspicious,
it burst out into the natural pulses of spring.

Again and again interrupted by downfall and darkness,
earthly, it gleamed.

Till, after a terrible pounding,
it entered the inconsolably open door.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

The Spanish Dancer Read Poem

As on all its sides a kitchen-match darts white
flickering tongues before it bursts into flame:
with the audience around her, quickened, hot,
her dance begins to flicker in the dark room.

And all at once it is completely fire.

One upward glance and she ignites her hair
and, whirling faster and faster, fans her dress
into passionate flames, till it becomes a furnace
from which, like startled rattlesnakes, the long
naked arms uncoil, aroused and clicking.

And then: as if the fire were too tight
around her body, she takes and flings it out
haughtily, with an imperious gesture,
and watches: it lies raging on the floor,
still blazing up, and the flames refuse to die -
Till, moving with total confidence and a sweet
exultant smile, she looks up finally
and stamps it out with powerful small feet.

The Stylite Read Poem

He nearly drowned in hermit-seeking seas
Of visitors — those voids he had allowed
To suck his soul — damned sycophantic fleas!
Wrenching himself from the besieging crowd,
He gripped with clammy hands and bulbous knees
And climbed a column standing idle there.

Alone, on top of it, his spirit soared,
And once again he started to compare
His weakness with the strength that is the Lord.

No end to it: as fast as he could praise
The Other grew, and overtopped it all.

Rustics, stopping near the foot to gaze,
Would see a lonely madman, high and small,
In lively conversation with the sky.

The howls came plunging down for them to hear
When rainy weather screened him from their eyes.

He seemed to pray by shouting in their ears
And yet he didn't realize for years
That, all this while, his following had grown.

Around the column, seating was set out
For pious tourist, amateur devout —
The column had more glamour than a throne.

But as he battled with his daily fiends,
Crying aloud, so mortified by them,
Despairing of a way to make them go,
The maggots, which had fattened up of late,
Dropped from his wounds upon the foremost row
Of those by whom he felt himself demeaned:
There to festoon the princely diadem
And pupate in the velvet robes of state.

The Swan Read Poem

This laboring through what is still undone,
as though, legs bound, we hobbled along the way,
is like the awkward walking of the swan.

And dying-to let go, no longer feel
the solid ground we stand on every day-
is like anxious letting himself fall
into waters, which receive him gently
and which, as though with reverence and joy,
draw back past him in streams on either side;
while, infinitely silent and aware,
in his full majesty and ever more
indifferent, he condescends to glide.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

The Temptation Of St. Anthony Read Poem

It didn't help for him to drive the quills
Of porcupines into his lecher's flesh —
His pandemonian senses uttered shrill
Expulsive cries and issued him a fresh
Supply of freaks: Crawling, flitting sights'
Ill-fitting heads, whose squints and leers distort
Their teeming faces, glint-eyed with delight,
Crowding in around him for their sport.

Fruitful at night, his senses spawned like flies
Clustered on dung.

Their hatchlings' breeding place,
His body, waved with brightly speckled lies
That coalesced to whispers of disgrace.

Unwanted pleasure would dissolve his face
Into a drinking pool that filled with eyes
And he, as shadows opened up their thighs,
Handled and warm, awake to his embrace,
Screamed for the angel, screamed without restraint.

The angel, trailing glory from above,
Arrived, was there, and then contrived to shove
The difficulties back into the saint.

So he could struggle, inwardly tormented
By beasts and demons, as he had for years,
And somehow God, an essence far from clear,
Could be distilled from what the saint fermented.

The Unicorn Read Poem

The saintly hermit, midway through his prayers
stopped suddenly, and raised his eyes to witness
the unbelievable: for there before him stood
the legendary creature, startling white, that
had approached, soundlessly, pleading with his eyes.

The legs, so delicately shaped, balanced a
body wrought of finest ivory.

And as
he moved, his coat shone like reflected moonlight.

High on his forehead rose the magic horn, the sign
of his uniqueness: a tower held upright
by his alert, yet gentle, timid gait.

The mouth of softest tints of rose and grey, when
opened slightly, revealed his gleaming teeth,
whiter than snow.

The nostrils quivered faintly:
he sought to quench his thirst, to rest and find repose.

His eyes looked far beyond the saint's enclosure,
reflecting vistas and events long vanished,
and closed the circle of this ancient mystic legend.

The Voices Read Poem

The rich and fortunate do well to keep silent,
for no one cares to know who and what they are.

But those in need must reveal themselves,
must say: I am blind,
or: I'm on the verge of going blind,
or: nothing goes well with me on earth,
or: I have a sickly child,
or: I have little to hold me together…
And chances are this is not nearly enough.

And because people try to ignore them as they
pass by them: these unfortunate ones have to sing!
And at times one hears some excellent singing!
Of course, people differ in their tastes: some would
prefer to listen to choirs of boy-castrati.

But God himself comes often and stays long,
when the castrati's singing disturbs Him.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

The Wait Read Poem

It is life in slow motion,
it's the heart in reverse,
it's a hope-and-a-half:
too much and too little at once.

It's a train that suddenly
stops with no station around,
and we can hear the cricket,
and, leaning out the carriage
door, we vainly contemplate
a wind we feel that stirs
the blooming meadows, the meadows
made imaginary by this stop.

Translated by A.

Poulin

Time and Again Read Poem

TIme and again, however well we know the landscape of love,
and the little church-yard with lamenting names,
and the frightfully silent ravine wherein all the others
end: time and again we go out two together,
under the old trees, lie down again and again
between the flowers, face to face with the sky.

To Lou Andreas-Salome Read Poem

I held myself too open, I forgot
that outside not just things exist and animals
fully at ease in themselves, whose eyes
reach from their lives' roundedness no differently
than portraits do from frames; forgot that I
with all I did incessantly crammed
looks into myself; looks, opinion, curiosity.

Who knows: perhaps eyes form in space
and look on everywhere.

Ah, only plunged toward you
does my face cease being on display, grows
into you and twines on darkly, endlessly,
into your sheltered heart.

As one puts a handkerchief before pent-in-breath-
no: as one presses it against a wound
out of which the whole of life, in a single gush,
wants to stream, I held you to me: I saw you
turn red from me.

How could anyone express
what took place between us?

We made up for everything
there was never time for.

I matured strangely
in every impulse of unperformed youth,
and you, love, had wildest childhood over my heart.

Memory won't suffice here: from those moments
there must be layers of pure existence
on my being's floor, a precipitate
from that immensely overfilled solution.

For I don't think back; all that I am
stirs me because of you.

I don't invent you
at sadly cooled-off places from which
you've gone away; even your not being there
is warm with you and more real and more
than a privation.

Longing leads out too often
into vagueness.

Why should I cast myself, when,
for all I know, your influence falls on me,
gently, like moonlight on a window seat.

Translated by A.

Poulin

To Music Read Poem

Music: breathing of statues.

Perhaps:
silence of paintings.

You language where all language
ends.

You time
standing vertically on the motion of mortal hearts.

Feelings for whom?

O you the transformation
of feelings into what?

—: into audible landscape.

You stranger: music.

You heart-space
grown out of us.

The deepest space in us,
which, rising above us, forces its way out,—
holy departure:
when the innermost point in us stands
outside, as the most practiced distance, as the other
side of the air:
pure,
boundless,
no longer habitable.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

To Say Before Going to Sleep Read Poem

I would like to sing someone to sleep,
have someone to sit by and be with.

I would like to cradle you and softly sing,
be your companion while you sleep or wake.

I would like to be the only person
in the house who knew: the night outside was cold.

And would like to listen to you
and outside to the world and to the woods.

The clocks are striking, calling to each other,
and one can see right to the edge of time.

Outside the house a strange man is afoot
and a strange dog barks, wakened from his sleep.

Beyond that there is silence.

My eyes rest upon your face wide-open;
and they hold you gently, letting you go
when something in the dark begins to move.

Torso of an Archaic Apollo Read Poem

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit.

And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power.

Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:
Would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you.

You must change your life.

Original text
Archaïscher Torso Apollos
Wir kannten nicht sein unerhörtes Haupt,
darin die Augenäpfel reiften.

Aber
sein Torso glüht noch wie ein Kandelaber,
in dem sein Schauen, nur zurückgeschraubt,
sich hält und glänzt.

Sonst könnte nicht der Bug
der Brust dich blenden, und im leisen Drehen
der Lenden könnte nicht ein Lächeln gehen
zu jener Mitte, die die Zeugung trug.

Sonst stünde dieser Stein entstellt und kurz
unter der Schultern durchsichtigem Sturz
und flimmerte nicht so wie Raubtierfelle
Und bräche nicht aus allen seinen Rändern
aus wie ein Stern: denn da ist keine Stelle,
die dich nicht sieht.

Du mußt dein Leben ändern.

Venetian Morning Read Poem

Windows pampered like princes always see
what on occasion deigns to trouble us:
the city that, time and again, where a shimmer
of sky strikes a feeling of floodtide,
takes shape without once choosing to be.

Each new morning must first show her the opals
she wore yesterday, and pull rows
of reflections out of the canal
and remind her of the other times:
only then does she concede and settle in
like a nymph who received great Zeus.

The dangling earrings ring out at her ear;
but she lifts San Giorgio Maggiore
and smiles idly into that lovely thing.

Translated by Edward Snow

Water Lily Read Poem

My whole life is mine, but whoever says so
will deprive me, for it is infinite.

The ripple of water, the shade of the sky
are mine; it is still the same, my life.

No desire opens me: I am full,
I never close myself with refusal-
in the rhythm of my daily soul
I do not desire-I am moved;
by being moved I exert my empire,
making the dreams of night real:
into my body at the bottom of the water
I attract the beyonds of mirrors…
Translated by A.

Poulin

What Birds Plunge Through Is Not The Intimate Space Read Poem

What birds plunge through is not the intimate space,
in which you see all Forms intensified.

(In the Open, denied, you would lose yourself,
would disappear into that vastness.

)
Space reaches from us and translates Things:
to become the very essence of a tree,
throw inner space around it, from that space
that lives in you.

Encircle it with restraint.

It has no limits.

For the first time, shaped
in your renouncing, it becomes truly free.

What Fields Are As Fragrant As Your Hands? Read Poem

What fields are as fragrant as your hands?

You feel how external fragrance stands
upon your stronger resistance.

Stars stand in images above.

Give me your mouth to soften, love;
ah, your hair is all in idleness.

See, I want to surround you with yourself
and the faded expectation lift
from the edges of your eyebrows;
I want, as with inner eyelids sheer,
to close for you all places which appear
by my tender caresses now.

Translated by John J.

L.

Mood

What Survives Read Poem

Who says that all must vanish?

Who knows, perhaps the flight
of the bird you wound remains,
and perhaps flowers survive
caresses in us, in their ground.

It isn't the gesture that lasts,
but it dresses you again in gold
armor —from breast to knees—
and the battle was so pure
an Angel wears it after you.

Translated by A.

Poulin

Woman in Love Read Poem

That is my window.

Just now
I have so softly wakened.

I thought that I would float.

How far does my life reach,
and where does the night begin
I could think that everything
was still me all around;
transparent like a crystal's
depths, darkened, mute.

I could keep even the stars
within me; so immense
my heart seems to me; so willingly
it let him go again.

whom I began perhaps to love, perhaps to hold.

Like something strange, undreamt-of,
my fate now gazes at me.

For what, then, am I stretched out
beneath this endlessness,
exuding fragrance like a meadow,
swayed this way and that,
calling out and frightened
that someone will hear the call,
and destined to disappear
inside some other life.

World Was In The Face Of The Beloved Read Poem

World was in the face of the beloved—,
but suddenly it poured out and was gone:
world is outside, world can not be grasped.

Why didn't I, from the full, beloved face
as I raised it to my lips, why didn't I drink
world, so near that I couldn't almost taste it?

Ah, I drank.

Insatiably I drank.

But I was filled up also, with too much
world, and, drinking, I myself ran over.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

You Must Not Understand This Life (with original German) Read Poem

You must not understand this life.

Then everyday will be like a party.

Simply let every day be
like a child who, passing by,
receives many flowers from the wind.

She doesn't collect or save them,
that doesn't even occur to her.

They are lost from her hair
where they were so happily arranged
and in the sweet years of her youth,
she reaches out to embrace the new.

~~
Du musst das Leben nicht verstehen
Du musst das Leben nicht verstehen,
dann wird es werden wie ein Fest.

Und lass dir jeden Tag geschehen
so wie ein Kind im Weitergehen von jedem Wehen
sich viele Blüten schenken lässt.

Sie aufzusammeln und zu sparen,
das kommt dem Kind nicht in den Sinn.

Es löst sie leise aus den Haaren,
drin sie so gern gefangen waren,
und hält den lieben jungen Jahren
nach neuen seine Hände hin.

You Who Never Arrived Read Poem

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you.

I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next
moment.

All the immense
images in me— the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and unsuspected
turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods-
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing.

An open window
in a country house—, and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.

Streets that I chanced upon,—
you had just walked down them and vanished.

And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled,
gave back my too-sudden image.

Who knows?

perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening…
Translated by Stephen Mitchell

You, Darkness Read Poem

You, darkness, that I come from
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone
and then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything-
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them! -
powers and people-
and it is possible a great presence is moving near me.

I have faith in nights.

You, you only, exist Read Poem

You, you only, exist.

We pass away, till at last,
our passing is so immense
that you arise: beautiful moment,
in all your suddenness,
arising in love, or enchanted
in the contraction of work.

To you I belong, however time may
wear me away.

From you to you
I go commanded.

In between
the garland is hanging in chance; but if you
take it up and up and up: look:
all becomes festival!
(original German)
Du nur, einzig du bist
Du nur, einzig du bist.

Wir aber gehn hin, bis einmal
unsres Vergehens so viel ist,
dass du entstehst: Augenblick,
schöner, plötzlicher,
in der Liebe entstehst oder,
entzückt, in des Werkes Verkürzung.

Dein bin ich, dein; wieviel mir die Zeit auch
anhat.

Von dir zu dir
bin ich befohlen.

Dazwischen
hängt die Guirlande im Zufall, dass aber du sie
auf- und auf- und aufnimmst:
siehe: die Feste!

The Beggars Read Poem

You didn't know
what was in the heap.

A visitor found
it to contain beggars.

They sell the hollow
of their hands.

They show the sightseer
their mouths full of filth,
and let him (he can afford it) peer
at the mange eating away at them.

In their twisted vision
his stranger's face is skewed;
they are pleased with their accession,
and when he speaks they spew.

Day in Autumn Read Poem

After the summer's yield, Lord, it is time
to let your shadow lengthen on the sundials
and in the pastures let the rough winds fly.

As for the final fruits, coax them to roundness.

Direct on them two days of warmer light
to hale them golden toward their term, and harry
the last few drops of sweetness through the wine.

Whoever's homeless now, will build no shelter;
who lives alone will live indefinitely so,
waking up to read a little, draft long letters,
and, along the city's avenues,
fitfully wander, when the wild leaves loosen.

Plaster Cast Torso of Apollo Read Poem

We can infer his long since looted head
with eyes like curated hail.

And that his chest
is still benumbed by empire from above,
as if a morgue, in his glare, now canonized,

fires an arctic solstice.

Otherwise, the pocked tits
could not oppress you, and Victory
would not grin through smug ligaments
to reach that sperm hive where priapism lived.

Otherwise, this bust would seem impugned
by the rude graffiti,ART, that’s spraybombed on it,
and would not slutshame like a frat boy’s tweet:

would not, from every morsel of itself
extrude a tomb: for here there is no flesh
to witness for you.

You must be those eyes.

Transposed from the German, below____
Transposed from the German, below


“Archäischer Torso Apollos”

Wir kannten nicht sein unerhörtes Haupt,
darin die Augenäpfel reiften.

Aber
sein Torso glüht noch wie ein Kandelaber,
in dem sein Schauen, nur zurückgeschraubt,

sich hält und glänzt.

Sonst könnte nicht der Bug
der Brust dich blenden, und im leisen Drehen
der Lenden könnte nicht ein Lächeln gehen
zu jener Mitte, die die Zeugung trug.

Sonst stünde dieser Stein entstellt und kurz
unter der Schultern durchsichtigem Sturz
und flimmerte nicht so wie Raubtierfelle

und bräche nicht aus allen seinen Rändern
aus wie ein Stern: denn da ist keine Stelle,
die dich nicht sieht.

Du mußt dein Leben ändern.

Song of the Dwarf Read Poem

Maybe my soul is straight and good,
but she’s got to lug my heart, my blood,
which all hurts because it’s crooked;
its weight sends her staggering.

She has no bed, she has no home,
she merely hangs on my sharp bones,
flapping her terrible wings.

And my hands are completely shot,
shriveled, worn: here, take a look
at how they clammily, clumsily hop
like rain-crazed toads.

As for all the other stuff,
it’s all used up and sad and old—
why doesn’t God haul me out to the muck
and let me drop.

Is it because of my mug
with its frowning mouth?

So often I would itch
to be luminous and free of fog
but nothing would approach
except big dogs.

And the dogs got zilch.

Song of the Little Cripple at the Street Corner Read Poem

Maybe my soul’s all right.

But my body’s all wrong,
All bent and twisted,
All this that hurts me so.

My soul keeps trying, trying
To straighten my body up.

It hangs on my skeleton, frantic,
Flapping its terrified wings.

Look here, look at my hands,
They look like little wet toads
After a rainstorm’s over,
Hopping, hopping, hopping.

Maybe God didn’t like
The look of my face when He saw it.

Sometimes a big dog
Looks right into it.

Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke

Harry

Poems