The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

  They had to be behind him, but their steps

  were ominously soft. If only he could

  turn around, just once (but looking back

  would ruin this entire work, so near

  completion), then he could not fail to see them,

  those other two, who followed him so softly:

  The god of speed and distant messages,

  a traveler’s hood above his shining eyes,

  his slender staff held out in front of him,

  and little wings fluttering at his ankles;

  and on his left arm, barely touching it: she.

  A woman so loved that from one lyre there came

  more lament than from all lamenting women;

  that a whole world of lament arose, in which

  all nature reappeared: forest and valley,

  road and village, field and stream and animal;

  and that around this lament-world, even as

  around the other earth, a sun revolved

  and a silent star-filled heaven, a lament-

  heaven, with its own, disfigured stars—:

  So greatly was she loved.

  But now she walked beside the graceful god,

  her steps constricted by the trailing graveclothes,

  uncertain, gentle, and without impatience.

  She was deep within herself, like a woman heavy

  with child, and did not see the man in front

  or the path ascending steeply into life.

  Deep within herself. Being dead

  filled her beyond fulfillment. Like a fruit

  suffused with its own mystery and sweetness,

  she was filled with her vast death, which was so new,

  she could not understand that it had happened.

  She had come into a new virginity

  and was untouchable; her sex had closed

  like a young flower at nightfall, and her hands

  had grown so unused to marriage that the god’s

  infinitely gentle touch of guidance

  hurt her, like an undesired kiss.

  She was no longer that woman with blue eyes

  who once had echoed through the poet’s songs,

  no longer the wide couch’s scent and island,

  and that man’s property no longer.

  She was already loosened like long hair,

  poured out like fallen rain,

  shared like a limitless supply.

  She was already root.

  And when, abruptly,

  the god put out his hand to stop her, saying,

  with sorrow in his voice: He has turned around—,

  she could not understand, and softly answered

  Who?

  Far away,

  dark before the shining exit-gates,

  someone or other stood, whose features were

  unrecognizable. He stood and saw

  how, on the strip of road among the meadows,

  with a mournful look, the god of messages

  silently turned to follow the small figure

  already walking back along the path,

  her steps constricted by the trailing graveclothes,

  uncertain, gentle, and without impatience.

  ALCESTIS

  Then all at once the messenger was there,

  amid the simmer of wedding guests: dropped in

  like the last ingredient into a bubbling pot.

  They kept on drinking and did not feel the stealthy

  entrance of the god, who held his aura

  as tight against his body as a wet cloak,

  and seemed to be like any one of them

  as he walked on. But abruptly, halfway through

  a sentence, one guest saw how the young master

  was startled from his couch at the table’s head,

  as though he had been snatched up into the air

  and mirroring, all over, with all his being,

  a strangeness that addressed him, horribly.

  And then, as though the mixture cleared, there was

  silence; on the bottom, just the dregs

  of muddy noise and a precipitate

  of falling babble, already giving off

  the rancid smell of laughter that has turned.

  For now they recognized the slender god,

  and, as he stood before them, filled with his message

  and unentreatable,—they almost knew.

  And yet, when it was uttered, it was beyond

  all understanding; none of them could grasp it.

  Admetus must die. When? Within the hour.

  But by this time he had broken through the shell

  of his terror; and he thrust out both his hands

  from the jagged holes, to bargain with the god.

  For years, for only one more year of youth,

  for months, for weeks, for just a few more days,

  oh not for days: for nights, for just a night,

  for one more night, for just this one: for this.

  The god refused; and then he started screaming,

  and screamed it out, held nothing back, screamed

  as his own mother once had screamed in childbirth.

  And she came up beside him, an old woman,

  and his father came up also, his old father,

  and both stood waiting—old, decrepit, helpless—

  beside the screaming man, who, as never before

  so closely, saw them, stopped, swallowed, said:

  Father,

  do you care about the wretched scrap of life

  still left you, that will just stick in your throat?

  Go spit it out. And you, old woman, old

  Mother,

  why should you stay here? you have given birth.

  And grabbed them both, like sacrificial beasts,

  in his harsh grip. Then suddenly let them go,

  pushed the old couple off, inspired, beaming,

  breathing hard and calling: Creon! Creon!

  And nothing else; and nothing but that name.

  Yet in his features stood the other name

  he could not utter, namelessly expectant

  as, glowing, he held it out to the young guest,

  his dearest friend, across the bewildered table.

  These two old people (it stood there) are no ransom,

  they are used up, exhausted, nearly worthless,

  but you, Creon, you, in all your beauty—

  But now he could no longer see his friend,

  who stayed behind; and what came forth was she,

  almost a little smaller than as he knew her,

  slight and sad in her pale wedding dress.

  All the others are just her narrow path,

  down which she comes and comes—: (soon she will be

  there, in his arms, which painfully have opened).

  But while he waits, she speaks; though not to him.

  She is speaking to the god, and the god listens,

  and all can hear, as though within the god:

  No one can be his ransom: only I can.

  I am his ransom. For no one else has finished

  with life as I have. What is left for me

  of everything I once was? Just my dying.

  Didn’t she tell you when she sent you down here

  that the bed waiting inside belongs to death?

  For I have taken leave. No one dying

  takes more than that. I left so that all this,

  buried beneath the man who is now my husband,

  might fade and vanish—. Come: lead me away:

  already I have begun to die, for him.

  And veering like a wind on the high seas,

  the god approached as though she were already

  dead, and instantly was there beside her,

  far from her husband, to whom, with an abrupt

  nod, he tossed the hundred lives of earth.

  The young man hurried, staggering, toward the two
/>
  and grasped at them as in a dream. But now

  they had nearly reached the entrance, which was crowded

  with sobbing women. One more time he saw

  the girl’s face, for just a moment, turning toward him

  with a smile that was as radiant as a hope

  and almost was a promise: to return

  from out of the abyss of death, grown fully,

  to him, who was still alive—

  At that, he flung

  his hands before his own face, as he knelt there,

  in order to see nothing but that smile.

  ARCHAIC TORSO OF APOLLO

  We cannot know his legendary head

  with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso

  is still suffused with brilliance from inside,

  like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

  gleams in all its power. Otherwise

  the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could

  a smile run through the placid hips and thighs

  to that dark center where procreation flared.

  Otherwise this stone would seem defaced

  beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders

  and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

  would not, from all the borders of itself,

  burst like a star: for here there is no place

  that does not see you. You must change your life.

  WASHING THE CORPSE

  They had, for a while, grown used to him. But after

  they lit the kitchen lamp and in the dark

  it began to burn, restlessly, the stranger

  was altogether strange. They washed his neck,

  and since they knew nothing about his life

  they lied till they produced another one,

  as they kept washing. One of them had to cough,

  and while she coughed she left the vinegar sponge,

  dripping, upon his face. The other stood

  and rested for a minute. A few drops fell

  from the stiff scrub-brush, as his horrible

  contorted hand was trying to make the whole

  room aware that he no longer thirsted.

  And he did let them know. With a short cough,

  as if embarrassed, they both began to work

  more hurriedly now, so that across

  the mute, patterned wallpaper their thick

  shadows reeled and staggered as if bound

  in a net; till they had finished washing him.

  The night, in the uncurtained window-frame,

  was pitiless. And one without a name

  lay clean and naked there, and gave commands.

  BLACK CAT

  A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place

  your sight can knock on, echoing; but here

  within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze

  will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

  just as a raving madman, when nothing else

  can ease him, charges into his dark night

  howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels

  the rage being taken in and pacified.

  She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen

  into her, so that, like an audience,

  she can look them over, menacing and sullen,

  and curl to sleep with them. But all at once

  as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;

  and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,

  inside the golden amber of her eyeballs

  suspended, like a prehistoric fly.

  THE FLAMINGOS

  Jardin des Plantes, Paris

  With all the subtle paints of Fragonard

  no more of their red and white could be expressed

  than someone would convey about his mistress

  by telling you, “She was lovely, lying there

  still soft with sleep.” They rise above the green

  grass and lightly sway on their long pink stems,

  side by side, like enormous feathery blossoms,

  seducing (more seductively than Phryne)

  themselves; till, necks curling, they sink their large

  pale eyes into the softness of their down,

  where apple-red and jet-black lie concealed.

  A shriek of envy shakes the parrot cage;

  but they stretch out, astonished, and one by one

  stride into their imaginary world.

  BUDDHA IN GLORY

  Center of all centers, core of cores,

  almond self-enclosed and growing sweet—

  all this universe, to the furthest stars

  and beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

  Now you feel how nothing clings to you;

  your vast shell reaches into endless space,

  and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.

  Illuminated in your infinite peace,

  a billion stars go spinning through the night,

  blazing high above your head.

  But in you is the presence that

  will be, when all the stars are dead.

  FROM

  REQUIEM

  [English]

  (1909)

  Notes

  REQUIEM FOR A FRIEND

  I have my dead, and I have let them go,

  and was amazed to see them so contented,

  so soon at home in being dead, so cheerful,

  so unlike their reputation. Only you

  return; brush past me, loiter, try to knock

  against something, so that the sound reveals

  your presence. Oh don’t take from me what I

  am slowly learning. I’m sure you have gone astray

  if you are moved to homesickness for anything

  in this dimension. We transform these Things;

  they aren’t real, they are only the reflections

  upon the polished surface of our being.

  I thought you were much further on. It troubles me

  that you should stray back, you, who have achieved

  more transformation than any other woman.

  That we were frightened when you died … no; rather:

  that your stern death broke in upon us, darkly,

  wrenching the till-then from the ever-since—

  this concerns us: setting it all in order

  is the task we have continually before us.

  But that you too were frightened, and even now

  pulse with your fear, where fear can have no meaning;

  that you have lost even the smallest fragment

  of your eternity, Paula, and have entered

  here, where nothing yet exists; that out there,

  bewildered for the first time, inattentive,

  you didn’t grasp the splendor of the infinite

  forces, as on earth you grasped each Thing;

  that, from the realm which already had received you,

  the gravity of some old discontent

  has dragged you back to measurable time—:

  this often startles me out of dreamless sleep

  at night, like a thief climbing in my window.

  If I could say it is only out of kindness,

  out of your great abundance, that you have come,

  because you are so secure, so self-contained,

  that you can wander anywhere, like a child,

  not frightened of any harm that might await you …

  But no: you’re pleading. This penetrates me, to

  my very bones, and cuts at me like a saw.

  The bitterest rebuke your ghost could bring me,

  could scream to me, at night, when I withdraw

  into my lungs, into my intestines,

  into the last bare chamber of my heart,—

  such bitterness would not chill me half so much

  as this mute pleading. What is it that you want?

  Tell me, must I travel? Did you leave

  so
me Thing behind, some place, that cannot bear

  your absence? Must I set out for a country

  you never saw, although it was as vividly

  near to you as your own senses were?

  I will sail its rivers, search its valleys, inquire

  about its oldest customs; I will stand

  for hours, talking with women in their doorways

  and watching, while they call their children home.

  I will see the way they wrap the land around them

  in their ancient work in field and meadow; will ask

  to be led before their king; will bribe the priests

  to take me to their temple, before the most

  powerful of the statues in their keeping,

  and to leave me there, shutting the gates behind them.

  And only then, when I have learned enough,

  I will go to watch the animals, and let

  something of their composure slowly glide

  into my limbs; will see my own existence

  deep in their eyes, which hold me for a while

  and let me go, serenely, without judgment.

  I will have the gardeners come to me and recite

  many flowers, and in the small clay pots

  of their melodious names I will bring back

  some remnant of the hundred fragrances.

  And fruits: I will buy fruits, and in their sweetness

  that country’s earth and sky will live again.

  For that is what you understood: ripe fruits.

  You set them before the canvas, in white bowls,

  and weighed out each one’s heaviness with your colors.

  Women too, you saw, were fruits; and children, molded

  from inside, into the shapes of their existence.

  And at last, you saw yourself as a fruit, you stepped

  out of your clothes and brought your naked body

  before the mirror, you let yourself inside

  down to your gaze; which stayed in front, immense,

  and didn’t say: I am that; no: this is.

  So free of curiosity your gaze

  had become, so unpossessive, of such true

  poverty, it had no desire even