The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke (Paperback)

Chapter One

1 It was to this, then, that your life was a tender prelude: the unavowed, the absent show themselves your heart! Instead of calling you to sunlight at the end of etudes, we avoid your name like the name of some fear. We avoid your name that stone proclaims its own, for the event that confers our names on stone weighs on the voices of those who recall looking for their brow's consent with frantic hand. It was to this, then, to this perfect music that all in you consented, lover and sister. The earth sings you; we feel the tilt of its head, but its mouth is turned toward someplace else. 2 Again and Again, I go and I lean before the slow life of your grave; you have surrendered your enclosure's peace to the periwinkle and the hawthorn. A young summer has re-covered the marble. So much living verdure between us! And you offer me that pale digital we cannot reach but from below. We, the living, we others who still tower too far from that future pose! Even beds prop us up, and we don't dare resemble you, Friend, as we fall asleep ... GONG 1 A scattered humming, perverted silence, all that was around changes to a thousand noises, leaves us and returns: the strange harmony of infinity's tide. We must close our eyes, renounce our mouths, remain mute, blind and dazzled: with space utterly shaken, what touches us wants no more from our being than attention. Who will suffice? The shallow ear quickly overflows - and, against our own, do we not tilt, full of every sound, the vast conch of the world's ear?

2 As if we were melting down bronze gods to add to them more massive gods of gold that shatter as they hum. And from all those gods departing in the flaming metals rise ultimate and royal sounds! from THE VALASIAN QUATRAINS

7. Up there, do you see alpine pastures for angels among the dark pines? In that strange light, almost celestial, they seem more than far. But in the bright valley, clear up to the crests, what aerial treasure! Everything that floats in the air and reflects will enter your wine. 23. Here the earth is surrounded by whatever suits its role as star; tenderly humiliated, it bears its aureole. When one look is launched: such flight through these pure distances; to take its measurements you need the voice of nightingales. 24. Once again the hour's turning silver, mingled with soft evening, the pure metal, and it couples slow returns of musical calm with a slower beauty. The ancient earth recovers, changes: a pure star survives our labor. Leaving day, scattered noises re-arrange themselves and re-enter the voice of waters.

37. Valaisian Sky Even as it thrills, how our heart depends on a whole distant sky to offer stable counsel. But this sky has always been accustomed to our cries; the friend of this rough earth whose contours it tempers. DOUBTS Tender nature, happy nature, where so many desires seek and intersect each other, indifferent, and yet still the basis of consents, overflowing nature where what exalts itself too soon lacerates and destroys itself, where from the rivalry of the delicious and the worst is born some semblance of repose, nature, killer by excess, creator, always ecstatic, that rekindles and consumes evil on the same brazier: Tell me, silencer, O tell me, am I like an instant of your fruits? Am I part of your dizzying abyss where your nights hurl themselves? Am I in harmony with your ineffable designs? Will I become a shout of your revolts? I, who was bread, have I fallen from the table, a lost crumb turning hard?

SPRINGTIME Let's start again, says the Earth, start again, it's my only chance. And suddenly springtime cries out: We're starting up again. And everywhere action and activity, such obedience. And the heart we'd want to restrain starts up again with one leap. But the obedient Earth well knows that she moves round and round, whereas we hurtle down toward infinity. THE MIGRATION OF POWERS Often a mask empties itself before believers and suddenly the idol apologizes for its deceitful throne, for its fantastic pomp, for its shrill and common gold. Some of our gods become exhausted and withered, arid and stiff; into others, while murmuring, tumbles the fresh spring of a refreshed divinity.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke by Rainer Maria Rilke A. Poulin, Jr. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---