THE NINTH DUINO ELEGY by Rainer Maria Rilke
by Aimee Louise Lund on Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 7:24am
Since this short span might well be lived as lives the laurel, deeper in its green than all other green surrounding, leaves, edged by wavelets, smiling like the breeze - then why, destiny overcome, must we still be human and long for further fate?
Not because happiness exists, that apparent advantage which barely presages loss. Not out of curiosity, nor as an exercise of such a heart as likewise in the laurel lies...But because to be here means so very much. Because this fleeting sphere appears to need us-in some strange way concerns us: we...most fleeting of all. Once and once only for each thing-then no more. For us as well. Once. Then no more... ever. But to have been as one, though but the once, with this world, never can be undone.
So we persevere, attempting to resolve it and contain it in our grasp, in overfilled eyes and within our voiceless heart; attempting to be it, as a gift - for whom? For ourselves, forever! But what can we abscond with? We cannot take our insight with us into the other realm, no matter how painfully gathered. (Canst We?) Nor anything which happened. Not one thing; neither suffering nor the heaviness of our lot. Not the hard earned lore of love, nor that which is beyond speaking. What can these things matter, later, underneath the stars? Better these things remain unsaid. When the rambler returns from the mountain to the vale, he carries no esoteric clump of soil, but some hard won word, pure and simple: a blossom of gentian, yellow and blue. Could it not be that we are here to say: house, bridge, cistern, gate, pitcher, flowering tree, window-or at most: monolith... skyscraper? But to say them in a way they, themselves, never knew themselves to be? Is not the undeclared intent of Earth, in urging lovers on, to make creation thrill to the rhythms of their rapture? Threshold. What do lovers care if, splinter by ancient splinter, they shred the lintels of their own front doors? As well they as the many before and the multitude to come...it was ever so.
Here is the home and the time of the tellable! Speak out and testify.This time is the time when the things we love are dying and the things we do not love are rushing to replace them, shadows cast by shadows: things willingly restrained by temporary confines but ready to spew forth as outer change of form decrees. Between its hammer blows the heart survives - as does, between the teeth, the tongue: in spite of all, the fount of praise.
Exalt no ineffable, rather a known world unto the angel. What do your splendors signify to him? You are an ingénue in the sphere of feeling he inhabits. So show him a common thing, the crafting of which has been passed down from age to age until our hands are, themselves,shaped to the making of it and our eyes to its beholding. Speak of objects! His eyes will grow wide, as did yours at the twister of the ropes in Rome or the pot-spinner by the Nile. Show him creature joy, without blame, entirely our own; how grief's bitter wail can live as song or transcend the utmost eloquence of violin in service of sorrow.These things that live upon the gesture of farewell know full well when they are praised: dwindling away, they demand rescue! And, that, through us - the most dwindling of all! They desire that we change them, whole, within our invisible hearts; transform them endlessly, Ah!...into ourselves. Whomever we are to be.
Earth, is this your will? An invisible resurrection within ourselves? Is it your desire one day to vanish? Earth! Invisible! What do you demand but transformation? Beloved Earth, I will! Further spring times are not required to win me - On my word, a single May is too heady for my blood. I have been your tongue - tied subject lo, these many years. Ever you spoke true and your holiest idea is Death, our constant friend.
Look, I live!
On what?
Neither childhood nor future
grows less...
prodigious springs
of being swell within my heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment