The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke (12 page)

From this cloud, look!, which has so wildly covered

the star that just now shone there—(and from me),

from these dark clustered hills which hold the night,

the night-winds, for a while—(and from me),

from this stream in the valley which has caught

the jagged glow of the night sky—(and from me);

from me, Lord, and from all of this, to make

one single Thing; from me and the slow breathing

with which the flock, penned in the fold at dusk,

endures the great dark absence of the world—,

from me and every candle flickering

in the dimness of the many houses, Lord:

to make one Thing; from strangers, for I know

no one here, Lord, and from me, from me,

to make one Thing; from sleepers in these houses,

from old men left alone at the asylum

who cough in bed, importantly, from children

drunk with sleep upon the breasts of strangers,

from so much that is uncertain and from me,

from me alone and from what I do not know,

to make the Thing, Lord Lord Lord, the Thing

which, earthly and cosmic, like a meteor

gathers within its heaviness no more than

the sum of flight: and weighs nothing but arrival.

Why must a man be always taking on

Things not his own, as if he were a servant

whose marketing-bag grows heavier and heavier

from stall to stall and, loaded down, he follows

and doesn’t dare ask: Master, why this banquet?

Why must a man keep standing like a shepherd,

exposed, in such an overflow of power,

so much a part of this event-filled landscape,

that if he were to lean back against a tree trunk

he would complete his destiny, forever.

Yet does not have, in his too open gaze,

the silent comfort of the flock: has nothing

but world; has world each time he lifts his head;

each time he looks down—world. What gladly yields

to others, pierces him like music, blindly

enters his blood, changes, disappears.

At night he stands up, the distant call of birds

already deep inside him; and feels bold

because he has taken all the galaxies

into his face, not lightly—, oh not like someone

who prepares a night like this for his beloved

and treats her to the skies that he has known.

Let me, though, when again I have all around me

the chaos of cities, the tangled

skein of commotion, the blare of the traffic, alone,

let me, above the most dense confusion,

remember this sky and the darkening rim of the valley

where the flock appeared, echoing, on its way home.

Let my courage be like a rock,

let the daily task of the shepherd seem possible to me,

as he moves about and, throwing a stone to measure it,

fixes the hem of his flock where it has grown ragged.

His solemn, unhurried steps, his contemplative body,

his majesty when he stands: even today a god

could secretly enter this form and not be diminished.

He alternately lingers and moves, like the day itself,

and shadows of clouds

pass through him, like thoughts which space

is thinking, slowly, for him.

Let him be whomever you wish. Like a fluttering candle

into a stormlamp, I place myself there inside him.

A glow becomes peaceful. May death

more easily find its way.

(After reading Shakespeare’s
Tempest
)

Once, somewhere, somehow, you had set him free

with that sharp jolt which as a young man tore you

out of your life and vaulted you to greatness.

Then he grew willing; and, since then, he serves,

after each task impatient for his freedom.

And half imperious, half almost ashamed,

you make excuses, say that you still need him

for this and that, and, ah, you must describe

how
you helped him. Yet you feel, yourself,

that everything held back by his detention

is missing from the air. How sweet, how tempting:

to let him go—to give up all your magic,

submit yourself to destiny like the others,

and know that his light friendship, without strain now,

with no more obligations, anywhere,

an intensifying of this space you breathe,

is working in the element, thoughtlessly.

Henceforth dependent, never again empowered

to shape the torpid mouth into that call

at which he dived. Defenseless, aging, poor,

and yet still breathing
him
in, like a fragrance

spread endlessly, which makes the invisible

complete for the first time. Smiling that you ever

could summon him and feel so much at home

in that vast intimacy. Weeping too, perhaps,

when you remember how he loved and yet

wished to leave you: always both, at once.

(Have I let go already? I look on,

terrified by this man who has become

a duke again. How easily he draws

the wire through his head and hangs himself

up with the other puppets; then steps forward

to ask the audience for their applause

and their indulgence.… What consummate power:

to lay aside, to stand there nakedly

with no strength but one’s own, “which is most faint.”)

Straining so hard against the strength of night,

they fling their tiny voices on the laughter

that will not burn. Oh disobedient world,

full of refusal. And yet it breathes the space

in which the stars revolve. It doesn’t need us,

and, at any time, abandoned to the distance,

could spin off in remoteness, far from us.

And now it deigns to touch our faces, softly,

like a loved woman’s glance; it opens up

in front of us, and may be spilling out

its essence on us. And we are not worth it.

Perhaps the angels’ power is slightly lessened

when the sky with all its stars bends down to us

and hangs us here, into our cloudy fate.

In vain. For who has noticed it? And even

if someone has: who dares to lean his forehead

against the night as on a bedroom window?

Who has not disavowed it? Who has not

dragged into this pure inborn element

nights shammed and counterfeited, tinsel-nights,

and been content (how easily) with those?

We ignore the gods and fill our minds with trash.

For gods do not entice. They have their being,

and nothing else: an overflow of being.

Not scent or gesture. Nothing is so mute

as a god’s mouth. As lovely as a swan

on its eternity of unfathomed surface,

the god glides by, plunges, and spares his whiteness.

Everything tempts. Even the little bird,

unseen among the pure leaves, can compel us;

the flower needs space and forces its way over;

what doesn’t the wind lay claim to? Only the god,

like a pillar, lets us pass, distributing

high up, where he supports, to either side

the light arch of his equanimity.

Often I gazed at you in wonder: stood at the window begun

the day before, stood and gazed at you in wonder. As yet

the new city seemed forbidden to me, and the strange

unpersuadable landscape darkened as though

I didn’t exist. Even the nearest Things

didn’t care whether I understood them. The street

thrust itself up to the lamppost: I saw it was foreign.

Over there—a room, feelable, clear in the lamplight—,

I already took part; they noticed, and closed the shutters.

Stood. Then a child began crying. I knew what the mothers

all around, in the houses, were capable of—, and knew

the inconsolable origins of all tears.

Or a woman’s voice sang and reached a little beyond

expectation, or downstairs an old man let out

a cough that was full of reproach, as though his body were right

and the gentler world mistaken. And then the hour

struck—, but I counted too late, it tumbled on past me.—

Like a new boy at school, who is finally allowed to join in,

but he can’t catch the ball, is helpless at all the games

the others pursue with such ease, and he stands there staring

into the distance,—where—?: I stood there and suddenly

grasped that it was you:
you
were playing with me, grown-up

Night, and I gazed at you in wonder. Where the towers

were raging, where with averted fate

a city surrounded me, and indecipherable mountains

camped against me, and strangeness, in narrowing circles,

prowled around my randomly flickering emotions—:

it was then that in all your magnificence

you were not ashamed to know me. Your breath moved tenderly

over my face. And, spread across solemn distances,

your smile entered my heart.

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 un-suspected

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 …

The road from intensity to greatness passes through sacrifice.

—
Kassner

For a long time he attained it in looking.

Stars would fall to their knees

beneath his compelling vision.

Or as he looked on, kneeling,

his urgency’s fragrance

tired out a god until

it smiled at him in its sleep.

Towers he would gaze at so

that they were terrified:

building them up again, suddenly, in an instant!

But how often the landscape,

overburdened by day,

came to rest in his silent awareness, at nightfall.

Animals trusted him, stepped

into his open look, grazing,

and the imprisoned lions

stared in as if into an incomprehensible freedom;

birds, as it felt them, flew headlong

through it; and flowers, as enormous

as they are to children, gazed back

into it, on and on.

And the rumor that there was someone

who knew how to look,

stirred those less

visible creatures:

stirred the women.

Looking how long?

For how long now, deeply deprived,

beseeching in the depths of his glance?

When he, whose vocation was Waiting, sat far from home—

the hotel’s distracted unnoticing bedroom

moody around him, and in the avoided mirror

once more the room, and later

from the tormenting bed

once more:

then in the air the voices

discussed, beyond comprehension,

his heart, which could still be felt;

debated what through the painfully buried body

could somehow be felt—his heart;

debated and passed their judgment:

that it did not have love.

(And denied him further communions.)

For there is a boundary to looking.

And the world that is looked at so deeply

wants to flourish in love.

Work of the eyes is done, now

go and do heart-work

on all the images imprisoned within you; for you

overpowered them: but even now you don’t know them.

Learn, inner man, to look on your inner woman,

the one attained from a thousand

natures, the merely attained but

not yet beloved form.