![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
druidspellFirst Elegy
What angel, if I called out, would hear me?
And even if one of them impulsively embraced me,
I'd be crushed by its strength. For beauty
is just the beginning of a terror we can barely stand:
we admire it because it calmly refuses to crush us.
Every angel terrifies. And so I control myself,
choking back the dark impulse to cry.
But who, then, can help us? Not angels, not men.
And the animals, instinctively, have already noticed
that we aren't really at home in our talked-about world.
So we're left with, say, some tree on a hillside --
one that we see every day; we're left with yesterday's
stroll and the pampered loyalty of an old habit
that liked us so much it decided to stay, and never left.
And the night -- the night, when the worldmouth of the wind
gnaws at our faces. But who wouldn't she stay for,
that sought-after, softly deceiving night
who wearily awaits the lonely stranger?
You think the nighttime is easier on lovers?
All they do is use each other to hide their fates
from themselves. When are you going to learn?
Take the emptiness you hold in your arms
and scatter it into the open spaces we breathe:
maybe the birds will feel how the air is thinner
and fly with more affection.
All right, the springtime did need you. And lots of stars
wanted you to watch them. A wave, long-gone now,
seemed to lift itself just for you, as did the strains
from some violin when you passed an open window.
All this was entrusted to you. But how did you handle it?
Isn't it true that you were always distracted,
expecting something else, as though these things
were announcing some lover's arrival?
(Where did you think you were going to keep her,
what with all those strange thoughts coming and going
inside you -- not to mention spending the night!)
Instead, when you're lonely, praise the great lovers:
the fame of their loving still isn't known enough.
The abandoned ones -- how you almost envied them,
they seemed so far above those others, whose love
was answered. You can't praise them enough, but try.
Start over. Remember: a hero is immortal
because even his downfall was a play for survival,
a final birth. But the great lovers exhaust nature:
she has to take them back into herself, as though
she weren't strong enough to create them a second time.
Have you praised Gaspara Stampa enough --
so that any girl deserted by a lover would feel,
in the face of such example: If only I
could be like her! Shouldn't these oldest hurts,
by now, be bearing more fruit in us? Isn't it time
that our loving freed us from the one we love
so that we, however shaken, endured -- just as the arrow,
drawn, endures the bowstring, anxious to become
more than itself? Because staying is nowhere.
Voices, voices. Heart, listen -- as before this
only saints have listened: the power of that voice
lifted them right off the ground and still,
impossible as ever, they kept on kneeling,
not even noticing -- they were listening so hard.
I don't mean that you could survive the voice of God --
not at all. But notice the breathing,
the continuous message that emerges from silence.
Even now it rasps toward you from the mouths
of all those who died young. In Rome, in Naples,
whenever you entered a church, you would feel
their fate, that quiet message. Or else
some inscription overhead would remind you of it --
like the plaque you recently saw in Santa Maria Formosa.
What do they want of me? That I kindly remove my look
of suffered injustice, which sometimes tends
to prevent their spirits from speaking clearly.
True, it's strange not to live on the earth anymore,
not to continue customs you were just getting used to,
not to interpret roses and other such promising things
as omens of future happiness, not to be what you were,
cared for by infinitely anxious hands, and to put
even your name aside, like some broken toy.
Strange, not to wish wishes any more. Strange
to see what once seemed so securely fastened together
fluttering randomly in space. And it's exhausting
being dead -- so many things to catch up on
before you experience a little eternity. Still,
the living are all mistaken when they make the distinctions
too sharp. Angels, it's said, sometimes don't even know
if they're moving among the living or the dead.
In both realms the flood of eternity rushes forever
over all the ages and, in both, drowns out the voices.
The ones taken from us early no longer need us, finally.
You gradually get used to being away from the things
of earth, just as you gradually turned from the breasts
of your mother. But we, who need such powerful secrets,
we who tend to advance in joy only through sorrow,
could we survive without them? And what about the legend
of the mourning for Linos: how it was music
that first dared to break that rigid silence,
how only then -- in the startled space from which death
had snatched the godlike youth forever --
could the emptiness begin to vibrate with that sound
which even now delights us, comforts us, helps?
What angel, if I called out, would hear me?
And even if one of them impulsively embraced me,
I'd be crushed by its strength. For beauty
is just the beginning of a terror we can barely stand:
we admire it because it calmly refuses to crush us.
Every angel terrifies. And so I control myself,
choking back the dark impulse to cry.
But who, then, can help us? Not angels, not men.
And the animals, instinctively, have already noticed
that we aren't really at home in our talked-about world.
So we're left with, say, some tree on a hillside --
one that we see every day; we're left with yesterday's
stroll and the pampered loyalty of an old habit
that liked us so much it decided to stay, and never left.
And the night -- the night, when the worldmouth of the wind
gnaws at our faces. But who wouldn't she stay for,
that sought-after, softly deceiving night
who wearily awaits the lonely stranger?
You think the nighttime is easier on lovers?
All they do is use each other to hide their fates
from themselves. When are you going to learn?
Take the emptiness you hold in your arms
and scatter it into the open spaces we breathe:
maybe the birds will feel how the air is thinner
and fly with more affection.
All right, the springtime did need you. And lots of stars
wanted you to watch them. A wave, long-gone now,
seemed to lift itself just for you, as did the strains
from some violin when you passed an open window.
All this was entrusted to you. But how did you handle it?
Isn't it true that you were always distracted,
expecting something else, as though these things
were announcing some lover's arrival?
(Where did you think you were going to keep her,
what with all those strange thoughts coming and going
inside you -- not to mention spending the night!)
Instead, when you're lonely, praise the great lovers:
the fame of their loving still isn't known enough.
The abandoned ones -- how you almost envied them,
they seemed so far above those others, whose love
was answered. You can't praise them enough, but try.
Start over. Remember: a hero is immortal
because even his downfall was a play for survival,
a final birth. But the great lovers exhaust nature:
she has to take them back into herself, as though
she weren't strong enough to create them a second time.
Have you praised Gaspara Stampa enough --
so that any girl deserted by a lover would feel,
in the face of such example: If only I
could be like her! Shouldn't these oldest hurts,
by now, be bearing more fruit in us? Isn't it time
that our loving freed us from the one we love
so that we, however shaken, endured -- just as the arrow,
drawn, endures the bowstring, anxious to become
more than itself? Because staying is nowhere.
Voices, voices. Heart, listen -- as before this
only saints have listened: the power of that voice
lifted them right off the ground and still,
impossible as ever, they kept on kneeling,
not even noticing -- they were listening so hard.
I don't mean that you could survive the voice of God --
not at all. But notice the breathing,
the continuous message that emerges from silence.
Even now it rasps toward you from the mouths
of all those who died young. In Rome, in Naples,
whenever you entered a church, you would feel
their fate, that quiet message. Or else
some inscription overhead would remind you of it --
like the plaque you recently saw in Santa Maria Formosa.
What do they want of me? That I kindly remove my look
of suffered injustice, which sometimes tends
to prevent their spirits from speaking clearly.
True, it's strange not to live on the earth anymore,
not to continue customs you were just getting used to,
not to interpret roses and other such promising things
as omens of future happiness, not to be what you were,
cared for by infinitely anxious hands, and to put
even your name aside, like some broken toy.
Strange, not to wish wishes any more. Strange
to see what once seemed so securely fastened together
fluttering randomly in space. And it's exhausting
being dead -- so many things to catch up on
before you experience a little eternity. Still,
the living are all mistaken when they make the distinctions
too sharp. Angels, it's said, sometimes don't even know
if they're moving among the living or the dead.
In both realms the flood of eternity rushes forever
over all the ages and, in both, drowns out the voices.
The ones taken from us early no longer need us, finally.
You gradually get used to being away from the things
of earth, just as you gradually turned from the breasts
of your mother. But we, who need such powerful secrets,
we who tend to advance in joy only through sorrow,
could we survive without them? And what about the legend
of the mourning for Linos: how it was music
that first dared to break that rigid silence,
how only then -- in the startled space from which death
had snatched the godlike youth forever --
could the emptiness begin to vibrate with that sound
which even now delights us, comforts us, helps?
Tags:
