Day 7: "The Duino Elegies" Rainer Maria Rilke (translation by Gary Miranda)

[druidspell]

Third Elegy

Third Elegy

It's one thing to write love poems. Another, though,
to deal with that river-god of the blood: hidden, guilty.
Even the girl, who thinks she knows her young lover,
even she isn't close enough for him to tell
how this lord of lust -- in the lonely times
before she knew him, before she eased him, almost
before she seemed possible -- would lift up his godhead,
wet with the unknowable, and churn the night
to an endless riot. Such a Neptune in the blood,
with his three-pronged weapon! Such a dark wind
in the chest out of that twisted conch! Listen:
the night is becoming a cave, emptying itself.

Stars, perhaps it's from you that the lover's desire
for the face of his loved one grows; perhaps he
responds to her pure look because he remembers yours.
But it wasn't you, and it wasn't his mother,
who arched his brows into that look of readiness.
it wasn't your mouth, girl -- though you hold him --
it wasn't yours that made his own mouth curve
with new ripeness. Do you really think
that your gentle arrival could shatter him so --
you, who move with the softness of a morning breeze?
True, you surprised his heart. But older fears
swept in when your touch startled him. Call him:
you can't distract him completely from those dark
associations. He tries, and he does escape them,
and, relieved, he makes your deepest self his home,
enters, and decides to begin himself new there.
But when did he ever begin himself really?

Mother, you made him once, tiny; you began him;
he was new with you. You shaped a friendly world
for his new eyes, shutting the strange one out.
But where did they go -- those years when your slight frame
was enough to eclipse a whole world of chaos?
You protected him from so much: at night
you made the threatening bedroom safe; your caring
filled up the space of his night, and made it human.
You placed the nightlight not in the darkness,
but in your closer presence, and it shone like a friend.
There wasn't a creak you couldn't explain away
with a smile -- almost as though you expected the floor
to behave that way. And he listened, and it soothed him.
You accomplished so much, so gently, just by rising
and coming to him. His tall, shrouded fate
retreated behind the dresser; his unruly future,
disgruntled, adjusted itself to the folds of the curtain.

And he himself, as he lay there comforted,
drowsily mixing the sweet taste of your presence
with the first taste of sleep, seemed
to be well-protected. But inside -- who, there,
could hold back or channel the flood of his origin?
For he had no sense of fear, asleep.
Sleeping, dreaming, in a kind of fever,
how he wandered off. He -- innocent, shy --
how tangled he became in the clinging weeds
of his inner self, already thick with twisted designs,
with clutching undergrowth, with the shapes
of prowling animals. How he surrendered to,
how he loved it! Loved his inner world,
his wilderness within, that primitive jungle inside
where his heart, shimmering green, stood
amid speechless debris. Loved! Passed through it
and, following his roots, arrived at the violent
source where his own birth was already irrelevant.
Descended with love into the older blood,
the ravines where monsters waited, still gorged
with his forefathers. And every monster recognized
him, winked at him, knew. Yes, Horror itself
smiled at him. You've seldom smiled so tenderly, Mother.
And how could he not love it, if it smiled at him!
Before he loved you he loved it: even while
you carried him in your womb it was there,
dissolved in the water that cushions the seed.

Look, we don't love, like the flowers, from a single
season. When we love, a sap that has flowed
for countless ages stirs up in our arms. Yes,
girl -- this: that we've loved within ourselves,
not one, not someone we're about to meet,
but the numberless comings-into-being;
not one child only, but all the fathers
who live in our depths like crumbled mountains,
but the parched riverbeds of previous mothers,
but the whole soundless landscape of destiny,
cloudy or cloudless, this, girl, was here before you.

And you yourself -- how could you know
what an ancient past you awoke in your lover?
What emotions flared up from beings no longer there!
What women inside him hated you! What sinister
men you aroused in his young veins! Dead children
stretched out their hands to you ... Oh
gently, gently, show him the steady love
in a daily task, attract him toward the garden,
make him a gift of the irresistible night ...

Hold him ... back.