The Duino Elegies

Original by Ranier Maria Rilke - Translated by Lore Confino

THE EIGHTH ELEGY

                                  dedicated to Rudolf Kassner

Earth's creatures look wide-eyed
into the Open. Our eyes, alone, as though reversed,
are ringed like snares around free exit.
What lies outside, is clearly shown us
in the animal's face. Yet, even the young child
we turn about: make it look back
at manifest form, not at the openness,
so deeply etched into the animal's countenance.
It knows no death. We, alone, carry our own foreboding.
With death ever kept behind it, and God, ahead,
the free animal moves in Eternity, as water
flows from its own source.
  We never have, not for a single day,
pure space before us, in which flowers unfold,
open endlessly. There is always World.
Never that Nowhere free from negatives: pure,
unwatched, the place one might breathe, and ever know
and never crave. A child can lose itself in
that still place, till roused and shaken.
Or we may die: become it. For, close to dying,
we see death no more, and fix our gaze
into the open, perhaps wide-eyed as animals do.
Lovers might come to it, amazed,
were not the other's presence blocking sight.
As if by chance, they catch a glimpse, partly,
behind each other... Yet, they cannot see
past that other, and are caught back into World.
  With eyes ever turned towards Creation,
we see only a reflection of the free,
its clouded image, by ourselves obscured.
Sometimes, a silent animal looks up at us, looks calmly
through us. We call it Destiny to be opposite
Nothing but that. Forever opposite.

 

If they shared consciousness of our kind,
the sure-footed animals, approaching us
along their own set path, would surely wrench
us round, to follow in their step. Quite unaware
of their own state, the animals foresee no end
to being, forever looking out.
And where we see future, they see the whole,
themselves contained in all, and healed forever.

Yet, even so, these warm and watchful creatures
know the weight and pain of a great sorrow.
A memory clings to them, no less; remembrance,
often overwhelming us, as if all we strive for
had once been closer, truer, and bonded
with great, enduring tenderness. But here, in our World,
that bond is severed, where once it was the breath
of life. And so we are left unsure, exposed
in our second home and open to the winds.

O bliss of tiny creatures who continue
in the womb which gav e them life. O joy of the gnat,
dancing inside the womb, even on its nuptial day.
Womb is all things. Regard the bird, half knowing
of its origin, as if it were the soul released
in flight from tombed Etruscan, whose effigy reposes
free upon the lid. How startled by itself must be
the one that has to fly, and is womb born.
Alarmed, it flits and darts through the thin air.
Quick as a flaw runs through a cup, the bat leaves
hairline traces in the porcelain of dusk.

 

And we: onlookers always, everywhere,
turned towards all things, yet ne’er looking out!
All overwhelms us. We create order.
It falls apart. Again we create order
and fall apart ourselves.

Who, then, has cast us in the role of one
needing to part, no matter what we do?
As one, who stands on the last hill,
sees his familiar valley one more time,
looks back, halts, lingers...
so do we live, forever taking leave.