Day 8: "The Duino Elegies" Rainer Maria Rilke (translation by Gary Miranda)

[druidspell]

The trees of our lives -- when will their winter come?
We can't agree on it. Unlike migratory birds,
we don't know it by instinct. Out of season and late,
we suddenly throw ourselves into the wind,
landing in some indifferent pond. We're no sooner
conscious of blooming than we're conscious of withering.
And to think that lions still roam somewhere,
so used to being magnificent
that they don't even know what weakness is.

But we, even completely intent on one thing,
always feel the pinch of another. Resentment
is our middle name. Don't lovers always overstep
the boundaries of each other's lives, promising
room to breathe, adventure, a place of their own?
Then, painfully, a thumbnail sketch of the background
is added for contrast, and we see them;
they're very clear to us. We don't know the shape
of our own feeling, but only what shapes it
from the outside.

Which of us hasn't sat anxiously before the curtain
of his own heart? Up it goes. The stage is set
for a scene of parting. Easy enough to understand.
The inevitable garden, the props swaying a little
as the dancer starts to enter...
But wait -- he's not the one! No matter how easily
he pretends, he's nothing more than a civil servant
in disguise, the kind who enters his house by the kitchen.
I've got no use for these actors who only half fill
their masks. I'd rather have a puppet -- at least
it's whole. I'll put up with the hollow body
and the strings and the face that's all surface.
Look -- I'm out here waiting, and even if
the footlights go out and a voice says "That's all!" --
even if nothing comes my way from the stage
but the grey breeze of emptiness -- even if none
of my silent ancestors will sit by me any more --
not a woman, not even the kid with the brown squinty eye --
even then I'll stay. I can always stare.

Aren't I right, Father? You who found the taste
of life so bitter because you sampled mine,
that first confusing taste of what I would have to do,
who kept on sampling it as I grew older and,
fascinated by the aftertaste of my strange future,
kept trying to fathom that vague stare of mine --
yes, you, my father, who so often since your death
have been inside me, worrying about the things
I hoped for, trading that peace that the dead have earned,
whole kingdoms of peace, for my tiny piece of fate --
aren't I right? And both of you, who used to love me
for the small beginnings of love I showed you
and which I always lost track of because it seemed
that the distance in your faces, even while I loved them,
became so wide you weren't there any more --
aren't I right when I feel like this
waiting in front of the puppet show, staring so hard
at it, in fact, that in order to balance my stare
an angel finally has to come as one of the actors
and bring the puppet's body to life?

Angel and puppet. So now we are going to have a play.
So now, here, we can put together what we're always
taking apart. So now, for the first time,
the cycle that works in the whole order of things
can apply to our seasons as well. So now,
over and above us, the angel is playing.
Look, the dying -- surely they can figure out
how full of deception this all is, what we're doing here --
here where nothing is what it really is.
Oh for those times as a child, when there was more
behind each shape than just the past, and the future
didn't exist. True, we were growing up, and sometimes
we even tried to grow up faster, half out of love
for those who had nothing left but being grown up.
Still, when we went off by ourselves, we were content
with the never-changing, and we stood there
in a place between world and toy, on a spot that had,
from the very beginning, been destined for a pure event.

But who'll describe a child just as he is?
Who'll put him in a constellation and let him
measure the distances with his hand?
Who'll make the death of a child out of bread
that's grey and getting hard -- or leave it
inside his round mouth like the core of a lovely apple...?
A murderer's mind is easy to understand. But this:
death, your whole death -- and even before you've lived --
to hold it inside you so gently and without resentment --
this is beyond description!