Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic
Orders?
And even if one were to suddenly
take
me to its heart, I would vanish into its
stronger
existence. For beauty is nothing but
the
beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear,
and
we revere it so, because it calmly disdains
to
destroy us. Every Angel is terror.
And
so I hold myself back and swallow the cry
of
a darkened sobbing. Ah, who then can
we
make use of? Not Angels: not men,
and
the resourceful creatures see clearly
that
we are not really at home
in
the interpreted world. Perhaps there remains
some
tree on a slope, that we can see
again
each day: there remains to us yesterday’s street,
and
the thinned-out loyalty of a habit
that
liked us, and so stayed, and never departed.
Oh,
and the night, the night, when the wind full of space
wears
out our faces – whom would she not stay for,
the
longed-for, gentle, disappointing one, whom the solitary heart
with
difficulty stands before. Is she less heavy for lovers?
Ah,
they only hide their fate between themselves.
Do
you not know yet? Throw the emptiness out of your arms
to
add to the spaces we breathe; maybe the birds
will
feel the expansion of air, in more intimate flight.
Yes,
the Spring-times needed you deeply. Many a star
must
have been there for you so you might feel it. A wave
lifted
towards you out of the past, or, as you walked
past
an open window, a violin
gave
of itself. All this was their mission.
But
could you handle it? Were you not always,
still,
distracted by expectation, as if all you experienced,
like
a Beloved, came near to you? (Where could you contain her,
with
all the vast strange thoughts in you
going
in and out, and often staying the night.)
But
if you are yearning, then sing the lovers: for long
their
notorious feelings have not been immortal enough.
Those,
you almost envied them, the forsaken, that you
found
as loving as those who were satisfied. Begin,
always
as new, the unattainable praising:
think:
the hero prolongs himself, even his falling
was
only a pretext for being, his latest rebirth.
But
lovers are taken back by exhausted Nature
into
herself, as if there were not the power
to
make them again. Have you remembered
Gastara
Stampa sufficiently
yet, that any girl,
whose
lover has gone, might feel from that
intenser
example of love: ‘Could I only become like her?’
Should
not these ancient sufferings be finally
fruitful
for us? Isn’t it time that, loving,
we
freed ourselves from the beloved, and, trembling, endured
as
the arrow endures the bow, so as to be, in its flight,
something
more than itself? For staying is nowhere.
Voices,
voices. Hear then, my heart, as only
saints
have heard: so that the mighty call
raised
them from the earth: they, though, knelt on
impossibly
and paid no attention:
such
was their listening. Not that you could withstand
God’s
voice: far from it. But listen to the breath,
the
unbroken message that creates itself from the silence.
It
rushes towards you now, from those youthfully dead.
Whenever
you entered, didn’t their fate speak to you,
quietly,
in churches in Naples or Rome?
Or
else an inscription exaltedly impressed itself on you,
as
lately the tablet in Santa Maria Formosa.
What
do they will of me? That I should gently remove
the
semblance of injustice, that slightly, at times,
hinders
their spirits from a pure moving-on.
It
is truly strange to no longer inhabit the earth,
to
no longer practice customs barely acquired,
not
to give a meaning of human futurity
to
roses, and other expressly promising things:
no
longer to be what one was in endlessly anxious hands,
and
to set aside even one’s own
proper
name like a broken plaything.
Strange:
not to go on wishing one’s wishes. Strange
to
see all that was once in place, floating
so
loosely in space. And it’s hard being dead,
and
full of retrieval, before one gradually feels
a
little eternity. Though the living
all
make the error of drawing too sharp a distinction.
Angels
(they say) would often not know whether
they
moved among living or dead. The eternal current
sweeps
all the ages, within it, through both the spheres,
forever,
and resounds above them in both.
Finally
they have no more need of us, the early-departed,
weaned
gently from earthly things, as one outgrows
the
mother’s mild breast. But we, needing
such
great secrets, for whom sadness is often
the
source of a blessed progress, could we exist without them?
Is
it a meaningless story how once, in the grieving for Linos,
first
music ventured to penetrate arid rigidity,
so
that, in startled space, which an almost godlike youth
suddenly
left forever, the emptiness first felt
the
quivering that now enraptures us, and comforts, and helps.
Rilke - Duino Elegies
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