CONTENTS
The Book of Hours
The Book of Images
New Poems
Requiem
Duino Elegies
Sonnets to Orpheus
Poems 1906–26
Notes
Index of Titles
THE BOOK OF HOURS
(1905)
WITH STROKES THAT RING CLEAR
With strokes that ring clear and metallic, the hour
to touch me bends down on its way:
my senses are quivering. I feel I’ve the power—
and I seize on the pliable day.
Not a thing was complete till by me it was eyed,
every kind of becoming stood still.
Now my glances are ripe and there comes like a bride
to each of them just what it will.
There’s nothing so small but I love it and choose
to paint it gold-groundly and great
and hold it most precious and know not whose
soul it may liberate …
I LIVE IN EXPANDING RINGS
I live in expanding rings that are weaving
over these things below.
The last, perhaps, is beyond my achieving,
I’ll make an attempt at it though.
Round God, the old tower, my gyres I perform,
and I’ve gyred there centuries long;
and don’t know whether I’m falcon or storm
or, maybe, a mighty song.
WHAT WILL YOU DO, GOD?
What will you do, God, if Death takes me?
I am your jug (if someone breaks me?)
I am your drink (if curdling cakes me?)
I am your trim, your trade—it makes me
think: with me goes your meaning too.
You’ll have no house to turn into,
where words, so near and warm, will greet then.
They’ll fall from off your weary feet then,
those velvet sandals I’m for you.
Your cloak will slip from off your shoulders.
Your glance, which on my cheek would rest,
warmly as by a pillow pressed,
will come, and, after much vain quest,
sink, as the sun goes down the west,
into some lap of alien boulders.
What will you do, God? I’m distressed.
YOU MUSTN’T BE AFRAID, GOD
You mustn’t be afraid, God. They say mine
to all those things whose patience does not fail.
They’re like a gale against the branches blowing
and saying “My tree.”
They scarcely see
how everything their hands can seize is glowing
so hot that even by its extremity
they could not hold it without getting burnt.
They say mine, as with peasants one will dare
to say “My friend the Prince” in conversation,
when that impressive prince is otherwhere.
They say mine of their alien habitation,
while knowing nothing of the master there.
They say mine and they speak of properties,
when everything upcloses which they near:
just as a mountebank might have no fear
of calling even sun and lightning his.
That’s how they talk: “My life,” they say, “My wife”
“My dog,” “My child,” although they know that life
and wife and dog and child are all alike
remote configurings on which they strike
with outstretched hands in blind obscurity.
True, only great men know this certainly,
and long for eyes. The rest refuse to hear
that all their wretched wandering career
is with no single thing in harmony,
and that, rejected by their property,
owners disowned, they no more have the power
to own a woman than to own a flower,
which leads a life that’s foreign to us all.
Ah, God, don’t lose your balance. Even he
who loves you and in darkness still can see
and know your face, when like a wavering light
he feels your breath, does not possess you quite.
And if at night by some one you are guessed,
so that you’re forced to come into his prayer:
you’re still the guest
that onwardly will fare.
God, who can hold you? You are just your own,
whom no possessor’s hand can be upsetting,
even as the still-maturing, sweeter-getting
vintage belongs but to itself alone.
THE BOOK OF IMAGES
(1902 and 1906)
GIRLS
Others on lengthy wanderings
to the darksome poets are forced to fare;
must always be asking a traveler
if he’s not seen one singing there
or laying his hands on strings.
Only girls will never ask
what bridge leads to images;
will smile merely, brightlier than necklaces
of pearl against silver bowls unfurled.
All doors from their lives are entrances
into a poet
and into the world.
FROM A CHILDHOOD
Rich darkness round the room was streaming
where the boy sat, quite hidden in himself.
His mother came, a dream within his dreaming,
and a glass quivered on a silent shelf.
Feeling the room had given her away,
she kissed him—“So it’s you”—and let him be …
Then both glanced at the piano timidly,
for often of an evening she would play,
and had a song that drew him deep and clung.
He sat there very still. His large gaze hung
upon her hand which, under bright rings bowing,
as though with labor through a snow-drift plowing,
over the white keys softly swung.
PONT DU CARROUSEL
That blind man standing by the parapet,
gray as some nameless empire’s boundary stone,
he is perhaps that something unbeknown
to which the planetary clock is set,
the silent center of the starry ways;
for all around him strives and struts and strays.
He keeps his movelessly inerrant station
where manifold perplexing crossways go;
the somber entrance to the world below
among a superficial generation.
AUTUMN DAY
Lord, it is time. The summer was so great.
Impose upon the sundials now your shadows
and round the meadows let the winds rotate.
Command the last fruits to incarnadine;
vouchsafe, to urge them on into completeness,
yet two more south-like days; and that last sweetness,
inveigle it into the heavy vine.
He’ll not build now, who has no house awaiting.
Who’s now alone, for long will so remain:
sit late, read, write long letters, and again
return to restlessly perambulating
the avenues of parks when leaves downrain.
AUTUMN
The leaves are falling, falling as from far,
as though above were withering farthest gardens;
they fall with a denying attitude.
And night by night, down into solitude,
the heavy earth falls far from every star.
We are all falling. This hand’s falling too—
all have this falling-sickn
ess none withstands.
And yet there’s One whose gently-holding hands
this universal falling can’t fall through.
PRESENTIMENT
I’m like a flag surrounded by distance.
Divining the coming winds, I must share their existence,
whereof things below reveal as yet no traces:
doors are still closing softly and quiet are the fire-places;
windows are not yet shaking, and dust lies heavily.
But I can already sense the storm, and surge like the sea.
And spread myself out and into myself downfall
and hurtle myself away and am all
alone in the great storm.
THE VOICES
Nine Leaves with a Title-Leaf
TITLE-LEAF
The rich and fortunate need no mention,
what they are troubles no one’s mind.
The needy, though, have to attract attention,
have to be saying: I am blind,
or else: that’s what I soon shall be;
or: everything here goes wrong with me;
or: I’ve left an ailing child behind;
or: that’s the place where I’ve been spliced …
And perhaps this hasn’t at all sufficed.
And, since otherwise everyone just goes flinging
past them like wings, they have to be singing.
And there one still can hear good song.
People are odd; they’ll travel farther
and hear a choir of castrati rather.
When tired of such choirs, though, to listen for long
to these voices comes God the Father.
THE BEGGAR’S SONG
From door to door in shower and shine
I pass continually;
into my right hand I consign
my right ear suddenly.
Then as something I never knew was mine
my voice will seem to me.
Then who is crying, whether it’s I
or another, I’m not quite sure.
It’s only a trifle for which I cry.
The poets cry for more.
And finally I shut my face
with both my eyes up tight;
as it lies with its weight in my hand’s embrace
it’s quite a restful sight.
Lest any should think I’d got no place
to lay my head at night.
THE BLIND MAN’S SONG
I’m blind, you outsiders, and that’s an affliction,
that’s an abhorrence, a contradiction,
something that daily exceeds me.
My hand upon my wife’s arm I lay,
gray hand of mine upon her gray gray,
and through a sheer void she leads me.
You touch and push and imagine your own
sound differs from that of stone upon stone,
and yet you’re mistaken: I alone
am living and suffering and sighing.
In me there’s a never-ending cry—
it may be my heart or my bowels, but I
don’t know which of them’s crying.
If ever you sang these songs, no trace
was there of this inflection.
Warmly each day to your dwelling-place
comes a new sun’s reflection.
And you’ve got a feeling of face-to-face,
and that makes for self-protection.
THE DRIVER’S SONG
It wasn’t in me. In and out it would go.
I wanted to hold it. The wine held it, though.
(What it was, I no longer can say.)
Then the wine held this and the other thing out,
till I came to trust it beyond all doubt.
In my imbecile way.
Now I’m in its power, and it flings me at will
about and about and is losing me still
to Death, that son of a bitch.
If he wins me, dirty card that I am,
he’ll use me to scratch his grisly ham
and toss me into the ditch.
THE SUICIDE’S SONG
Another moment to live through, then.
How the rope I fasten, again and again
someone cuts.
I’d got prepared so wonderfully,
and already a little eternity
was in my guts.
They bring me now, as they’ve done before,
this spoonful of life to sup.
No, I won’t, I won’t have any more,
let me bring it up.
Life’s an excellent thing, I know,
through all the world outspread;
I simply can’t digest it, though,
it only goes to my head.
It nourishes others, it makes me ill;
one can dislike the thing.
What for a thousand years I’ll still
require is dieting.
THE WIDOW’S SONG
Life was kind to me at the start.
It kept me warm, it put me in heart.
That with all who are young it has that art,
how could I then be aware?
I didn’t know what life could be—
it was nothing but years quite suddenly,
with no kindness or wonder or novelty,
as though torn in two pieces there.
That was neither its fault nor my own;
we both were left with patience alone,
but Death has not a whit.
I saw him coming (in what a way!),
and watched him taking and taking away:
I had no claim to it.
What was my own, mine really?
Was not even my misery
only a loan from Fate?
Fate doesn’t merely want happiness,
but pain back as well and outscreamed distress,
and buys ruin at a second-hand rate.
Fate was there and obtained for a sou
every expression that came into
my face or away would glide.
A clearance sale was held each day,
and when I was empty it went away
and left me unoccupied.
THE IDIOT’S SONG
They don’t interfere. They let me be.
They say that nothing can happen to me.
How good!
Nothing can happen. All comes to soar
round the Holy Spirit for evermore,
round that Spirit for ever sure—
how good!
No, one mustn’t suppose there could ever begin
to be any kind of danger therein.
There is, to be sure, the blood.
The blood’s the hardest, without a doubt.
I sometimes think I shall have to fall out—
(How good!)
Oh, what a lovely ball up there;
red and round as an everywhere.
Good, that you caused it to be.
Would it come if I called it to me?
All’s behaving in such a remarkable way,
now drifting together, now swimming away:
friendly, a little hard to survey.
How good!
THE ORPHAN GIRL’S SONG
I’m no one, and no one is what I shall be.
I’m still too small to exist, I agree;
but I’ll always be so.
Mothers and fathers, oh,
have pity on me.
Bringing up’s not worth the pains, I’ll allow:
I shan’t escape my fate.
No one can need me: it’s too soon now,
and tomorrow it’s too late.
I’ve only got this dress you see,
growing thin and colorless;
bur perhaps it’ll last an eternity
before God none the less.
I’ve only got this bit of hair
(the same as it was before),
which used to be someone’s dearest care.
Nothing’s
dear to him any more.
THE DWARF’S SONG
My soul is straight and good maybe;
my heart, though, my blood flowing crookedly,
all that which so distresses me,
just can’t hold it upright here.
It has no garden, it has no bed,
it clings to my sharp bones instead
and beats its wings with fright here.
My hands too will always be failing me.
How hopelessly stunted they are you can see:
damp, heavy, hopping constrictedly
like little toads in wet weather.
And everything else about me too
is old and worn and sad to view;
why does God delay to do
away with it altogether?
Is he angry with me for my face
with the mouth that seems to rue it?
It was often so ready to grow in grace
and let a light shine through it.
But of all that moved about the place
big dogs came closest to it.
And of that dogs have no trace.
THE LEPER’S SONG
Look, I am forsaken by everything.
Of me not one in the town knows anything,
I have become a leper.
And I rattle about with this rattle of mine,
knocking my melancholy sign
into the ears, to their dismay,
of every too-near-stepper.
And those that hear its woodenness, they
take good care not to look this way,
and won’t learn what has happened here.
As far as my rattle’s sound reaches, I
am at home; but perhaps the reason why
you make my rattle so loud is just
that my distance too may provoke mistrust
in those my nearness can terrify.
And thus for years on end I can,
without discovering maid or man,
woman or child, be faring.
Brutes I’ll refrain from scaring.
NEW POEMS
(1907 and 1908)
EARLY APOLLO
As framing boughs, still leafless, can exhibit
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