Original by Ranier Maria Rilke - Translated by Lore Confino
THE FIRST ELEGY
Who, if I cried out, would hear me in the reach
of Angels? Even if One chose suddenly to take me
to his heart, I would perish in the might of his being.
For Beauty is but the impact of growing Terror
we barely endure, and are amazed when it casually
disdains to destroy us.
Every Angel is terrible.
And so I check myself, force back the siren call
of my dark sobs. Oh on whom can we call? Not Angels,
not men, and the canny beasts soon pick up the scent
of our insecurity in the world we define.
Perhaps a tree on some hillside is ours to see
anew each day. Perhaps there remains the street
of yesterday, and the indulged loyalty of an old habit,
that enjoyed being hosted, and stayed, and would not leave.
Night, oh but the night, when the all-embracing wind
feeds at our faces! Who is not touched by night, longed for,
gently deceiving night, the lonely heart has to endure.
Night, is she easier to lovers? Alas, they only cover
with each other their lonely fate.
Do you still not know? Throw that emptiness
out of your arms into the air that we breathe, so that birds,
perhaps, feel the wider space, use it in keener flight.
Yes, you were needed. Every springtime needed you.
Stars demanded of you to feel their presence. A wave rose up,
surged from the past, or a violin surrendered its magic
as you passed by an open window. All this was your mission.
Did you discharge it? Were you not ever distracted
by anticipation? As if all Creation signalled you
the coming of a Mistress? (Where would you keep her,
when your great, and fanciful ideas come and go,
and often stay with you by night?)
Yet, if you are driven by longing, then sing of lovers,
their famous passions still not immortal enough.
Sing of women you almost envied, deserted women, you deemed
more loving than those who are fulfilled. Begin ever anew
your unachievable task: you must praise!
Think, the Hero lives on. For death to the Hero
is no more than his latest birth, his reason for being.
But exhausted nature takes lovers back into herself,
bereft of strength to create them a second time. And you?
Have you thought enough of Gaspara Stampa? Remembered,
that somewhere, a girl, abandoned by her lover, might wish
to follow her sublime example, and pray:
oh, that I might be as she was!
Should not these oldest of heartaches, at last, bear fruit
for us? Is it not time, that loving, we freed ourselves
from the beloved, and trembling, endured?
As the arrow endures the bowstring, so that gathered
for flight, it becomes more than itself.
Nothing stays still.
Voices. . . voices. . .Hear, my heart,
as only the Holy could hear: the mighty call
to raise them from the ground. Hard to believe, then,
they stayed on their knees, rapt in their hearing.
Not that you could ever bear the voice of God. But listen
to the voices made of silence...drifting towards you,
a constant message from those who died young.
Did not their fate address you softly, whenever you entered
a church in Rome or Naples? Or an inscription exalted you,
called to you, as did the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa?
What do they ask of me? To remove the seeming injustice
that hinders, at times, their spirit's free flight?
How strange, no longer to live upon Earth!
No more to practise customs barely learned, not to give
to roses, and other things of singular promise, the meaning
of Mankind's future. No more to be one's self
in ever anxious hands; to give up even one's name,
as if it were a broken toy. Strange, not to continue wishing
one's wishes. Strange, to see all that once signified,
so loosely fluttering in space. And being dead is full
of effort and retrieving, till one feels, by and by, a little
of eternity. Yet, the living are mistaken to compare too much.
Angels, it's said, are often unaware, if they are among
the living or the dead. The eternal current sweeps all ages
through the two domains, and raises its voice above both.
In the end, they no longer need us, the early-departed,
gently severed from terrestrial bonds, as the babe
is weaned from the mother's soft breasts. But we, who need
these great mysteries; we, who seldom have blessed progress
without mourning... could we exist without them?
Is the myth for nothing, that once, in the lament for Linos,
daring first Music penetrated the frozen numbness in
the aghast hall, from which a near god-like youth was gone
suddenly, for ever! And the void began to pulsate with chords
that now transport us, and comfort, and help.