and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
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She who did not come, wasn’t she determined
If we had to exist to become the one we love,what would the heart have to create?Lovely joy left blank, perhaps you arethe center of all my labors and my loves.If I’ve wept for you so much, it’s becauseI preferred you among so many outlined joys.
What fields are as fragrant as your hands?
upon your stronger resistance.Stars stand in images above.Give me your mouth to soften, love;ah, your hair is all in idleness.See, I want to surround you with yourselfand the faded expectation liftfrom the edges of your eyebrows;I want, as with inner eyelids sheer,to close for you all places which appearby my tender caresses now.Translated by John…
He felt the entrance’s green darkness
that he was still accepting and arranging;when at the opposite transparent end, far off,through green sunlight, as through green window panes,whitely a solitary shapeflared up, long remaining distantand then finally, the downdriving lightboiling over it at every step,bearing on itself a bright pulsation,which in the blond ran shyly to the back.But suddenly the shade was…
I have great faith in all things not yet spoken.
What no one yet has dared to risk and warrantwill be for me a challenge I must meet.If this presumptious seems, God, may I be forgiven.For what I want to say to you is this:my efforts shall be like a driving force,quite without anger, without timidnessas little children show their love for you.With these outflowing,…
What I have already learned as a lover,
then for you it distantly departed,now your destiny stands in all the stars.Over your breasts we will together contend:since as glowingly shining they’ve ripened,so also your hands desire to touch themand their own pleasure superintend.
A prince survives by unseen acts.
at Frederick’s workroom in the towerand found him formulating factsfor treatises on wingèd powerwhile his penman turned out text.It was in this aerie roomhe’d walked all night with her on arm,turbulent and barely fledged.Whatever plans then sprang to mind,whatever fondness deeply chimedin recollection he would trashand tend the frightened and impassionedthing he wished to understand.Every…
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.
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In the eyes: dream. The brow as if it could feel
freshness–seductive, though there is no smile.Under the rows of ornamental braidon the slim Imperial officer’s uniform:the saber’s basket-hilt. Both hands stayfolded upon it, going nowhere, calmand now almost invisible, as if theywere the first to grasp the distance and dissolve.And all the rest so curtained within itself,so cloudy, that I cannot understandthis figure as it…
That some day, emerging at last from the terrifying vision
That of the clear-struck keys of the heart not one may failto sound because of a loose, doubtful or broken string!That my streaming countenance may make me more resplendentThat my humble weeping change into blossoms.Oh, how will you then, nights of suffering, be rememberedwith love. Why did I not kneel more fervently, disconsolatesisters, more bendingly…
Ignorant before the heavens of my life,
of the stars. Their rising and descent. How still.As if I didn’t exist. Do I have anyshare in this? Have I somehow dispensed withtheir pure effect? Does my blood’s ebb and flowchange with their changes? Let me put asideevery desire, every relationshipexcept this one, so that my heart grows used toits farthest spaces. Better that…
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’
pressed me against his heart, I would perishin the embrace of his stronger existence.For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terrorwhich we are barely able to endure and are awedbecause it serenely disdains to annihilate us.Each single angel is terrifying.And so I force myself, swallow and hold backthe surging call of my dark sobbing.Oh,…
As on all its sides a kitchen-match darts white
with the audience around her, quickened, hot,her dance begins to flicker in the dark room.And all at once it is completely fire.One upward glance and she ignites her hairand, whirling faster and faster, fans her dressinto passionate flames, till it becomes a furnacefrom which, like startled rattlesnakes, the longnaked arms uncoil, aroused and clicking.And then:…
How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it high enough, past you, to other things?I would like to shelter it, among remotelost objects, in some dark and silent placethat doesn’t resonate when your depths resound.Yet everything that touches us, me and you,takes us together like a violin’s bow,which draws *one* voice out of two separate strings.Upon what instrument are we two spanned?And…