Rilke: Three translations

It is always wrong to translate Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926, for range of those hitherto unaware of him), but it is sometimes necessary. A small excursus on method and purpose next week, but I won’t kill the poems with that here (the asterisks are necessary due to this layout, for stanza division. But not part of the poems themselves). OK, enough. Either I’ve bodied forth some of the Teutonic darkness, or made a Black Forest Gateau. We’re about to find out

Till next week…

In the Exhibition Zoo at the Jardin des Plantes, Paris

What is seen through passing bars

Is so worn down it will not take.

A thousand bars that are replaced

By another thousand bars

*

Around soft-falling steps that fill

An ever inward turning curve

A dance of force, a swerve

Holding back the greater will

*

And only rarely do the eyes

Let in the world as an idea

That through the body shears

To the heart. Where it dies.

God speaks to us as we’re fit

Then walks us out of night.

There’s words, words half-heard:

*

You, sent far from your senses

Get to your desire’s edge

Flesh me out

*

Around you, the things rise like fire

Throwing out the dark

And I am veiled

*

Let it all happen, beauty and terror

Just keep going; no feeling’s final

Don’t lose touch with me

*

Close to here is the

Country they call life

You’ll know it by what it asks of you

*

Give me your hand.

How it looked then? That famous

Head, those fresh eyes? We’ve no idea.

But the torso burns like a chandelier

From which the cool gaze

*

Glares. Why else would it stun us,

The breast’s curve, or the thighs,

Turning, draw a smile out of

The middle line to its dark centre?

*

If not, the stone, blank, knife-cut

Wouldn’t, under glassy shoulders,

Shine like a wild animal’s wet fur

*

Nor burst its sides, exploding star.

Nowhere’s not seeing you

Here. You must change your life