How wildly I fling myself into the night air (Oh how I understand you, delicate flower on the same In which you breathe and surmise, the moment has shut them out, How they blow about in the May wind! From the Ever, What bends them too far, rounds them into rich garlands. Only their grave collapses they are supple as reeds Under the sobbing tree, remembering all that has been. Only their grave is old, only it ponders and darkens Lovers were not, Marina, are not permitted to know It carried the soaring image and plan of our transformation. To a goal as welcome as the temperate lands are for migrating birds, Thrown heart in our breast, the heart of a whole generation. Waiting room of new birth?,, Us?-a body of eyes Do you remember bow oftenĪ blind command would carry us through the icy Was plain to us from its delicacy and restraintĪnd from the curious power that transforms us from living beings To endure one of our kind, when it seizes him in its grip,Īvenges itself, kills. This silent commerce, when life is no longer willing We-tbough we seem to be tender-grant our toucb toĪb, bow remote already, bow inattentive, Marina,Įven in our innermost pretence. Just so, Marina, the kings gave away the gifts they renounced.Īs angels stop and put marks on the doors of those to be saved, The necks of unbroken flowers, I saw it on the Nile, in Kom- Ombo, Praising, my dearest-let us be lavish with praise, So innocent are gods, they listen for praise like children. Yet isn’t lament really a younger, descending joy?Įven the gods below want to be praised, Marina, Suddenly the force of our heaviness bends the song down to lament. We begin it as joy, and already it wholly surpasses us
That a song bursting out of their breast flings into invisible heights. Waves, Marina, we are ocean! Depths, Marina, we are sky.Įarth, Marina, we are earth, a thousand times springtime, like larks Of sameness, nowhere a name, nowhere a lasting achievement? Is all of life, then, a game, a meaningless fluctuation Whoever lets go in his fall, dives into the source and is healed. So when anyone falls, the perfect sum is not lessened.
Star we may go! In the Whole, all things are already numbered. We can’t make it larger, wherever we fling ourselves, to whatever Oh the losses into the All, Marina, the stars that are falling!
Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell Issue 82, Winter 1981
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