Elegies
Je ne puis me défaire de moi. Car, si j'abandonnais tout, tout ce qui est mien et, comme je le désire quelquefois, passais aveuglément dans tes bras, m'y perdais, c'est justement quelqu'un qui se serait abandonné que tu tiendrais : pas moi, pas moi.
I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.
Weißt du, ich will mich schleichen
leise aus lautem Kreis,
wenn ich erst die bleichen
Sterne über den Eichen
blühen weiß.
Wege will ich erkiesen,
die selten wer betritt
in blassen Abendwiesen?
und keinen Traum, als diesen:
Du gehst mit.
(Advent, 1898)
Pathways
Understand, I’ll slip quietly
away from the noisy crowd
when I see the pale stars rising,
blooming, over the oaks.
I’ll pursue
solitary pathways
through the pale twilit meadows,
with only this one dream:
You come too.
Letters to a young poet (Lettres à un jeune poète)
Si votre quotidien vous paraît pauvre, ne l’accusez pas. Accusez-vous vous-même de ne pas être assez poète pour appeler à vous ses richesses.
Je n’ai plus de toit et il pleut dans mes yeux.
Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final
Laissez tout vous arriver : beauté et terreur, continuez, aucun sentiment n'est définitif.
Tu dois donner naissance à tes visions.
Elles sont faites du futur qui attend sa naissance.
Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.
Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and greet each other.
The Panther
His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly--. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.
Der Panther
Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe
so müd geworden, dass er nichts mehr hält.
Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe
und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt.
Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte,
der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht,
ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte,
in der betäubt ein grosser Wille steht.
Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille
sicht lautlos auf—.Dann geht ein Bild hinein,
geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille —
und hört im Herzen auf zu sein.
Chanson du sommeil
Un jour, si jamais je te perds,
pourras-tu alors t'endormir
sans que je murmure doucement au-dessus de toi
comme l'air de la nuit qui s'agite dans le tilleul ?
Sans que je me réveille ici et que je regarde
et prononce des mots aussi tendres que des paupières
qui viennent se poser en apesanteur sur votre poitrine,
sur vos membres endormis, sur vos lèvres ?
Sans que je te touche et te laisse
seul avec ce qui est à toi, comme un jardin d'été
qui regorge de masses
de mélisse et d'anis étoilé ?
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
unsuspected 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...
Loneliness
Being apart and lonely is like rain.
It climbs toward evening from the ocean plains;
from flat places, rolling and remote, it climbs
to heaven, which is its old abode.
And only when leaving heaven drops upon the city.
It rains down on us in those twittering
hours when the streets turn their faces to the dawn,
and when two bodies who have found nothing,
dissapointed and depressed, roll over;
and when two people who despise eachother
have to sleep together in one bed-
that is when loneliness receives the rivers...