Poetry corner - original published translations
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Rilke
End piece
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Death is vast.
We are his grinning maw.
When we feel we are in the midst of life,
He weeps in our midst.
Buddha in Glory
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Centre of centres, seed of seeds
Almond, self-enclosed and sweetening, –
All this to the furthest star
Is your fruit’s flesh: hail to thee.
Lo, you feel that nothing cleaves to you;
Your shell reaches into infinite space
And there the concentrated juice pools and presses.
From without the joyful radiance pours in,
For high aloft your swollen, incandescent suns
Wheel across the zenith.
But in you something has begun
That will outlast the suns.
Love Song
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How shall I comport my soul so
It does not touch upon your own?
How shall I arch it over you to things beyond?
O, how I would love to couch it in something
Hidden in the darkness,
In some unknown, silent space that
Reverberates not when your depths sound.
But all that touches us, you and I,
Draws us together like a taut bow
Drawing a single voice from twin strings.
What is the instrument that we two span?
What violinist holds us in his hand?
O, sweet song.
Before the Passion
O had this been your will, never would you
Have sprung from woman’s womb:
Saviours must be dug from the hills,
Where flint is split from the stone.
Do you not regret your lovely valley,
Laying it thus to waste? Look upon my weakness;
I have naught but rivulets of milk and tears,
While you flowed always aplenty.
You were promised me with such extravagance.
Why did you not burst forth from me with wild excess?
If you require but tigers to tear you apart,
Why was I raised in a womanly house,
To weave a pure, soft white robe for you
Lined with ne’er a trace of seam to chafe –: thus has been my whole life,
And all at once you turn Nature on her head.
Hölderlin - Half of life
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The shore drops
With clinging yellow pears
And spread with wild roses
to the lake,
O graceous swans,
Drunk with kisses
You dip your heads
In the sacred sobering water.
Alas, whence shall I gather
Flowers come winter, and whence
The sunshine,
And the earth’s shadow?
The walls stand
Speechless and cold, weathervanes
Clatter in the wind