Those who have told the story try at this point to remind us of the house as it was then; there, only a short time has passed, a short period of counted time, everyone in the house knows exactly how much. The dogs have grown old, but they are still alive. It is reported that one of them let out a howl. All the daily tasks stop. Faces appear in the window, faces that have aged or grown up and touchingly resemble how they used to look. And in one old face, grown suddenly pale, recognition breaks through. Recognition? Is it really just recognition? —Forgiveness. Forgiveness of what? —Love. My God: it is love.
He, the one who was recognized, had no longer thought, preoccupied as he was, that love could still exist. It is easy to understand how, of everything that happened then, only this has been handed down to us: his gesture, the incredible gesture which had never been seen before, the gesture of supplication with which he threw himself at their feet, imploring them not to love. Dizzy with fright, they made him stand up, embraced him. They interpreted his outburst in their own way, forgiving him. It must have been an indescribable relief for him that, in spite of the desperate clarity of his posture, they all misunderstood him. He was probably able to stay. For every day he recognized more clearly that their love, of which they were so vain and to which they secretly encouraged one another, had nothing to do with him. He almost had to smile at their exertions, and it was obvious how little they could have him in mind.
How could they know who he was? He was now terribly difficult to love, and he felt that only One would be capable of it. But He was not yet willing.
UNCOLLECTED POEMS
1913–1918
Notes
THE SPANISH TRILOGY
I
From this cloud, look!, which has so wildly covered
the star that just now shone there—(and from me),
from these dark clustered hills which hold the night,
the night-winds, for a while—(and from me),
from this stream in the valley which has caught
the jagged glow of the night sky—(and from me);
from me, Lord, and from all of this, to make
one single Thing; from me and the slow breathing
with which the flock, penned in the fold at dusk,
endures the great dark absence of the world—,
from me and every candle flickering
in the dimness of the many houses, Lord:
to make one Thing; from strangers, for I know
no one here, Lord, and from me, from me,
to make one Thing; from sleepers in these houses,
from old men left alone at the asylum
who cough in bed, importantly, from children
drunk with sleep upon the breasts of strangers,
from so much that is uncertain and from me,
from me alone and from what I do not know,
to make the Thing, Lord Lord Lord, the Thing
which, earthly and cosmic, like a meteor
gathers within its heaviness no more than
the sum of flight: and weighs nothing but arrival.
II
Why must a man be always taking on
Things not his own, as if he were a servant
whose marketing-bag grows heavier and heavier
from stall to stall and, loaded down, he follows
and doesn’t dare ask: Master, why this banquet?
Why must a man keep standing like a shepherd,
exposed, in such an overflow of power,
so much a part of this event-filled landscape,
that if he were to lean back against a tree trunk
he would complete his destiny, forever.
Yet does not have, in his too open gaze,
the silent comfort of the flock: has nothing
but world; has world each time he lifts his head;
each time he looks down—world. What gladly yields
to others, pierces him like music, blindly
enters his blood, changes, disappears.
At night he stands up, the distant call of birds
already deep inside him; and feels bold
because he has taken all the galaxies
into his face, not lightly—, oh not like someone
who prepares a night like this for his beloved
and treats her to the skies that he has known.
III
Let me, though, when again I have all around me
the chaos of cities, the tangled
skein of commotion, the blare of the traffic, alone,
let me, above the most dense confusion,
remember this sky and the darkening rim of the valley
where the flock appeared, echoing, on its way home.
Let my courage be like a rock,
let the daily task of the shepherd seem possible to me,
as he moves about and, throwing a stone to measure it,
fixes the hem of his flock where it has grown ragged.
His solemn, unhurried steps, his contemplative body,
his majesty when he stands: even today a god
could secretly enter this form and not be diminished.
He alternately lingers and moves, like the day itself,
and shadows of clouds
pass through him, like thoughts which space
is thinking, slowly, for him.
Let him be whomever you wish. Like a fluttering candle
into a stormlamp, I place myself there inside him.
A glow becomes peaceful. May death
more easily find its way.
ARIEL
(After reading Shakespeare’s Tempest)
Once, somewhere, somehow, you had set him free
with that sharp jolt which as a young man tore you
out of your life and vaulted you to greatness.
Then he grew willing; and, since then, he serves,
after each task impatient for his freedom.
And half imperious, half almost ashamed,
you make excuses, say that you still need him
for this and that, and, ah, you must describe
how you helped him. Yet you feel, yourself,
that everything held back by his detention
is missing from the air. How sweet, how tempting:
to let him go—to give up all your magic,
submit yourself to destiny like the others,
and know that his light friendship, without strain now,
with no more obligations, anywhere,
an intensifying of this space you breathe,
is working in the element, thoughtlessly.
Henceforth dependent, never again empowered
to shape the torpid mouth into that call
at which he dived. Defenseless, aging, poor,
and yet still breathing him in, like a fragrance
spread endlessly, which makes the invisible
complete for the first time. Smiling that you ever
could summon him and feel so much at home
in that vast intimacy. Weeping too, perhaps,
when you remember how he loved and yet
wished to leave you: always both, at once.
(Have I let go already? I look on,
terrified by this man who has become
a duke again. How easily he draws
the wire through his head and hangs himself
up with the other puppets; then steps forward
to ask the audience for their applause
and their indulgence.… What consummate power:
to lay aside, to stand there nakedly
with no strength but one’s own, “which is most faint.”)
[Straining so hard against the strength of night]
Straining so hard against the strength of night,
they fling their tiny voices on the laughter
that will not burn. Oh disobedient world,
full of refusal. And yet it breathes the space
in which the stars revolv
e. It doesn’t need us,
and, at any time, abandoned to the distance,
could spin off in remoteness, far from us.
And now it deigns to touch our faces, softly,
like a loved woman’s glance; it opens up
in front of us, and may be spilling out
its essence on us. And we are not worth it.
Perhaps the angels’ power is slightly lessened
when the sky with all its stars bends down to us
and hangs us here, into our cloudy fate.
In vain. For who has noticed it? And even
if someone has: who dares to lean his forehead
against the night as on a bedroom window?
Who has not disavowed it? Who has not
dragged into this pure inborn element
nights shammed and counterfeited, tinsel-nights,
and been content (how easily) with those?
We ignore the gods and fill our minds with trash.
For gods do not entice. They have their being,
and nothing else: an overflow of being.
Not scent or gesture. Nothing is so mute
as a god’s mouth. As lovely as a swan
on its eternity of unfathomed surface,
the god glides by, plunges, and spares his whiteness.
Everything tempts. Even the little bird,
unseen among the pure leaves, can compel us;
the flower needs space and forces its way over;
what doesn’t the wind lay claim to? Only the god,
like a pillar, lets us pass, distributing
high up, where he supports, to either side
the light arch of his equanimity.
THE VAST NIGHT
Often I gazed at you in wonder: stood at the window begun
the day before, stood and gazed at you in wonder. As yet
the new city seemed forbidden to me, and the strange
unpersuadable landscape darkened as though
I didn’t exist. Even the nearest Things
didn’t care whether I understood them. The street
thrust itself up to the lamppost: I saw it was foreign.
Over there—a room, feelable, clear in the lamplight—,
I already took part; they noticed, and closed the shutters.
Stood. Then a child began crying. I knew what the mothers
all around, in the houses, were capable of—, and knew
the inconsolable origins of all tears.
Or a woman’s voice sang and reached a little beyond
expectation, or downstairs an old man let out
a cough that was full of reproach, as though his body were right
and the gentler world mistaken. And then the hour
struck—, but I counted too late, it tumbled on past me.—
Like a new boy at school, who is finally allowed to join in,
but he can’t catch the ball, is helpless at all the games
the others pursue with such ease, and he stands there staring
into the distance,—where—?: I stood there and suddenly
grasped that it was you: you were playing with me, grown-up
Night, and I gazed at you in wonder. Where the towers
were raging, where with averted fate
a city surrounded me, and indecipherable mountains
camped against me, and strangeness, in narrowing circles,
prowled around my randomly flickering emotions—:
it was then that in all your magnificence
you were not ashamed to know me. Your breath moved tenderly
over my face. And, spread across solemn distances,
your smile entered my heart.
[You who never arrived]
You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don’t even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next
moment. All the immense
images in me—the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and un-suspected
turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods—
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.
You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house—, and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me. Streets that I chanced upon,—
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back
my too-sudden image. Who knows? perhaps the same
bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening …
TURNING-POINT
The road from intensity to greatness passes through sacrifice.
—Kassner
For a long time he attained it in looking.
Stars would fall to their knees
beneath his compelling vision.
Or as he looked on, kneeling,
his urgency’s fragrance
tired out a god until
it smiled at him in its sleep.
Towers he would gaze at so
that they were terrified:
building them up again, suddenly, in an instant!
But how often the landscape,
overburdened by day,
came to rest in his silent awareness, at nightfall.
Animals trusted him, stepped
into his open look, grazing,
and the imprisoned lions
stared in as if into an incomprehensible freedom;
birds, as it felt them, flew headlong
through it; and flowers, as enormous
as they are to children, gazed back
into it, on and on.
And the rumor that there was someone
who knew how to look,
stirred those less
visible creatures:
stirred the women.
For how long now, deeply deprived,
beseeching in the depths of his glance?
When he, whose vocation was Waiting, sat far from home—
the hotel’s distracted unnoticing bedroom
moody around him, and in the avoided mirror
once more the room, and later
from the tormenting bed
once more:
then in the air the voices
discussed, beyond comprehension,
his heart, which could still be felt;
debated what through the painfully buried body
could somehow be felt—his heart;
debated and passed their judgment:
that it did not have love.
(And denied him further communions.)
For there is a boundary to looking.
And the world that is looked at so deeply
wants to flourish in love.
Work of the eyes is done, now
go and do heart-work
on all the images imprisoned within you; for you
overpowered them: but even now you don’t know them.
Learn, inner man, to look on your inner woman,
the one attained from a thousand
natures, the merely attained but
not yet beloved form.
LAMENT
Whom will you cry to, heart? More and more lonely,
your path struggles on through incomprehensible
mankind. All the more futile perhaps
for keeping to its direction,
keeping on toward the future,
toward what has been lost.
Once. You lamented? What was it? A fallen berry
&n
bsp; of jubilation, unripe.
But now the whole tree of my jubilation
is breaking, in the storm it is breaking, my slow
tree of joy.
Loveliest in my invisible
landscape, you that made me more known
to the invisible angels.
‘WE MUST DIE BECAUSE WE HAVE KNOWN THEM’
(Papyrus Prisse. From the sayings of Ptah-hotep, manuscript from ca. 2000 B.C.)
‘We must die because we have known them.’ Die
of their smile’s unsayable flower. Die
of their delicate hands. Die
of women.
Let the young man sing of them, praise
these death-bringers, when they move through his heart-space,
high overhead. From his blossoming breast
let him sing to them:
unattainable! Ah, how distant they are.
Over the peaks
of his feeling, they float and pour down
sweetly transfigured night into the abandoned
valley of his arms. The wind
of their rising rustles in the leaves of his body. His brooks run
sparkling into the distance.
But the grown man
shudders and is silent. The man who
has wandered pathless at night
in the mountain-range of his feelings:
is silent.
As the old sailor is silent,
and the terrors that he has endured
play inside him as though in quivering cages.
TO HÖLDERLIN
We are not permitted to linger, even with what is most
intimate. From images that are full, the spirit
plunges on to others that suddenly must be filled;
there are no lakes till eternity. Here,
falling is best. To fall from the mastered emotion
into the guessed-at, and onward.
To you, O majestic poet, to you the compelling image,
O caster of spells, was a life, entire; when you uttered it
a line snapped shut like fate, there was a death