Translation of Rainer Maria Rilke
for Rudolf Kassner
With all their sight, the creatures go
into the Open. But our inward turned eyes
surround it like snares
it catches then escapes to freedom.
To know what’s enough, we look at the face
the animal wears; we take even the smallest child,
turn him around and make him look back
at our wholeness, not at that open
deep and invisible within the animal’s face. Free from death.
We know death by sight; that free animal
has always its decline behind it (like a tail)
and God in front, and when it moves, it moves
already in eternity, like running springs.
We’ve never had, not for a single day
pure space before us, where flowers
unfold unceasing; it is always world
and never nowhere without the no: that pure,
unwatched, indefensible element we breathe,
always know, and never want. A child
may become silence and be always
wrested from it. Or one dies and is it.
Once near death, one doesn’t notice death anymore,
one stares beyond, perhaps with the limitless animal gape.
Lovers, were it not for the other, encumbering the view,
would approach and be stunned…
As if by mistake, it is released for them
behind the other…But neither gets near enough
to pass, and the world returns,
as if for the first time.
Creation always closes full circle on us, the mirage we see
is the reflection of the unconfined
we’ve eclipsed. Or some speechless animal
raising its composed eyes to see through us,
and by our means. This is destiny being opposed,
and nothing else, always opposite.
Were consciousness of our kind in the
sure animal, advancing to meet us
from a different direction – we’d orbit
and form a gap. But his being to him
is infinite, automatic, and without perspective
on his position, pure, like his outward gaze.
And where we see the future, he sees all
and himself in everything, sealed forever.
And yet, within the watchful and warm animal
is the weight and despair of a great sorrow.
For what often overwhelms us
clings to him as well – the remorse,
what for now we so long was once
nearer, so true, its touch could not be felt.
Here, all is distance, there all was breath.
After that first home, the second seems
Scattered and drafty.
O Bliss of the tiny creatures
who forever keep the womb that gave them;
O triumph of the gnat that can still leap within
even on its wedding day: the womb is all.
And look at the half-assured birds
they almost know inside and out from birth
like an Etruscan soul rising
from a corpse enclosed in a space
his latent form covers like a lid.
And how confounded is everything that comes from the womb
and must fly. As if afraid
of itself, it trembles through the air
like a crack through a cup, the way the trace of a bat
scratches the porcelain of evening.
And we: audience, always, over all
looking to everything but never from!
We overflow. We order it back. It cracks.
We order it back again, and we break.
Who has turned us around like this, so that we always
no matter what we do, keep the mien
of someone always leaving? Like a man
when the last hill shows him his undivided valley
for the last time, will turn, cling, linger—
that’s how we’ve lived, forever parting.
