BY RILKE
TRANSLATED BY TORSTEN SCHWANKE
I
Make something happen to us!
See how we tremble for life!
And we want to rise
Like a splendour and like a song.
II
You wanted to be like others
Who dress shyly in coolness;
Your soul wanted its silken,
Its weary maiden's woes
To blossom on the path of life.
But deep from your sickness
A strength dared to grow,
Suns blazed, seeds sank:
And you became like the wine.
And now you are sweet and full
Like an evening over us all,
And we feel ourselves falling,
And you make us all dull...
III
Look, our days are so narrow
And fearful the night chamber;
We all clumsily reach
The red roses.
You must be gentle with us, O Mary,
We blossom from your blood,
And you alone can know
How longing hurts so much!
You yourself have known this maidenly ache
Of the soul:
It feels like Christmas snow,
And yet is completely on fire...
IV
The sense remained for us on so musch,
Of that which is gentle and tender
We have some knowledge:
As of a secret garden,
As of a velvet cushion
That slips beneath our slumbers,
As of someone who loves us
With a bewildering tenderness...
But many words are far.
Many words have fled from the senses
And from the world.
They have harkened around thy throne,
As around a rising note,
O Mother Mary!
And thy Son
Smiles upon them:
Behold thy Son.
V
I wanted to be your garden first
And have tendrils and borders
And overshadow your beauty,
So that you with your motherly mild
Smile look upon me..
But then - when you came and went,
Something has happened to me:
There it calls me to the red roses,
When you beckon me from the white lilies.
VI
Our mothers are already tired
And when we anxiously urge them on,
They let their hands hang down,
And they believe in distant sounds:
Oh, we too have blossomed!
And they sew on the white
Clothes that we quickly tear,
In the dusty parlour light.
How they so faithfully oblige,
And they don't see
Our hot hands...
And we must show them to you,
When our mother is no longer awake;
And our hands will rise in the night
Like two white flames.
VII
Once I was so cool as a child,
Then everything hit me like trembling.
Now all fear is gone from me,
Only this one still warms my cheeks:
I am afraid of my feelings.
It is no longer the valley, in which a song
Spreads its light wings like protection,
It is a tower that flees from the corridors,
Until my longing looks up from the hem
And trembling with the strange strength contends,
That draws it so blissfully from the battlements.
VIII
O Mary, you are crying!
O Mary,
You weep! I know.
And there I want to cry
To your praise,
With my forehead on stones
Weeping...
Your hands are warm.
If I could put a keyboard under them,
You'd still have a song left.
But the hour dies without a testament...
IX
Yesterday I saw in a dream
A star standing in the silence.
And I felt: The Madonna spoke:
Like this star in the night blossom!
And I took all my strength to counsel.
Straight and slender from my snow-white shirt
I stretched myself. And the blossoming
Suddenly hurts me...
X
How came, O how came from your womb,
Mary, so much light
And so much grief?
Who was your bridegroom?
You call, you call, - and you forget,
That you are no longer the same
Who came to me in coolness...
I am yet so flowery young!
How am I to go on the fourteen
From childhood to annunciation
Through all your twilight
Into your garden?
XI
One of your serious angels
Stand on the edge of longing
Aand command me to tell
My sisters: You will weep!
For they are the pure roses
In all trials and sorrows
Like a game from the beginning.
Because they think they have overcome
What childhood suffered childishly,
They go smiling between their teeth,
And they carry no tears
Into the new sufferings...
XII
Oh, that we had to become so endless!
Still unfolding after unfolding,
And we have held the crusts of our coldness
Long, long for reason.
And whether we bind ourselves to each other
And in fear grasp ourselves tighter and tighter
And slowly, as if by the wind of a fountain:
None can with his pale, blind hands
Groping to find our depths.
XIII
My fair hair is becoming a burden to me,
As a dark lime branch
Which is already fading in its bloom
And grows heavier, because it almost
Is full of springtime.
Take from me
The terrible ornament!
You are still cool and green
Because under your thorns
The maiden myrtles blossom.
XIV
And in all my years
I was solemn and glad
Like the beautiful flocks of angels
That were around thy wonders:
My mother was so like thee...
And I have only been sad since
Her kisses faded from me;
And my listening and my fumbling
And my guessing is a groping
For the new tenderness.
XV
They all say, You have time,
What can be missing, child? -
I'm missing a golden lissom,
I can't go in a child's dress
When all are ready for the bridegroom
And light and bright.
I lack nothing but a little space,
I am under a spell,
And my dreams grow narrower and narrower.
Only space, that from the silk hemline
I can lift my hands up to the blossom tree...
XVI
Will this impetuous, wild
Looking becomes difficult for my sisters?
They flee to your icon,
And you spread out, gentle one,
And are before them like the ocean.
And you gently flood towards them,
They save themselves
Into your depths - and see
And see how the desires subside
As a blue summer rain
On soft islands.
XVII
But I feel myself getting warmer and warmer
And warmer, O queen,
And that every evening I am poorer
And more tired every morning...
I tear at the white silk,
And my shy dreams cry out,
Oh, let me suffer your sorrow!
Oh, let us both
Be sore from the same wonder!