Homecoming, Paul Celan

Snowfall, thicker and thicker
dove-colors, as yesterday,
snowfall, as if you were still asleep.

Stretching away, heaped white.
Upon it, endlessly,
sledge track of the lost.

Under it, concealed,
hump themselves up,
what so hurt the eyes,
hill upon hill,
invisible.

On each,
fetched home into its today,
an I turned to wood,
a dumb stake.

There: an apprehension,
wailed over by the icy wind,
fastens its dove-, its snow-
colored flag.

Meet All Goodbyes Head-On, Rainer Maria Von Rilke

Meet all goodbyes head-on, as if they were behind

you, because winter eventually goes by.
Because under winter it is so endlessly winter
that, overwintering, your heart survives entire.

Be always dead in Euridice—, climb singing,
climb praising back under the clean covers.
Here, among the dwindling, be in the richness of left-overs,
be a ringing glass that broke itself in ringing.

Be—and likewise know the non-being proviso,
the infinite ground of your inner vibration,
that you realize completely this one time.

To the used, as to the deaf-and-dumb,
goes the fullness of nature, that unspeakable sum.
Count yourself up in rejoicing and destroy the number.

* Blessed Haiku *

I am so blessed by
the new friends I've made! How can
I not die happy?

Want Change! O Be Excited, Rainer Maria Von Rilke

Want change! 0 be excited for the flame.
In it something withdraws from you that flaunts transformation;
the designing spirit who masters the earthly,
in the spin of the dancer loves nothing but the turning point.

What locks itself into remaining is already rocklike.
Is it safe in the protection of inconspicuous gray?
Wait! from afar the hardest warns the hard—
Beware! A distracted hammer cocks its arm.

They who pour themselves from the well recognize you
and lead you delicately through this cheerful process,
which often ends with the beginning and begins with the ending.

Every happy place is the child or grandchild of parting
suffered in amazement. And the transformed Daphne,
because she feels her laurels, wants you to change into wind.

Rilke Sonnets to Orpheus, Second Series, Number 12

Wolle die Wandlung. 0 sei für die Flamme begeistert,
drin sich ein Ding dir entzieht, das mit Verwandlungen prunkt;
jener entwerfende Geist, welcher das Irdische meistert,
liebt in dem Schwung der Figur nichts wie den wendenden Punkt.

Was sich ins Bleiben verschliesst, schon ists das Erstarrte;
wahnt es sich sicher im Schutz des unscheinbaren Grau's?
Warte, ein Hartestes warnt aus der Ferne das Harte.
Wehe—: abwesender Hammer holt ausl

Wer sich als Quelle ergiesst, den erkennt die Erkennung;
und sie fuhrt ihn entzückt durch das heiter Geschaffne,
das mit Anfang oft schliesst und mit Ende beginnt.

Jeder glückliche Raum ist Kind oder Enkel von Trennung,
den sie staunend durchgehn. Und die verwandelte Daphne
will, seit sie lorbeern fühlt, dass du dich wandelst in Wind.

The Dead Follow Mostly, Rainer Maria Von Rilke

The dead follow mostly a calmly ordered rule, established, 

wide-conquering man, when you first took up hunting

—I know you—not just fall and snare but strips of sail

hung down into the hollow karst.

Silently they lowered you, as if you were a sign

to celebrate peace. But then a boy gave the cloth a yank

—and out of the hollows the night threw a handful of white,

doves tumbling into the light...

                                               But that too is right.

Far from witnesses is there any hint of regret,

not just from the hunter himself, who proved early

to be competent and vigilant.

Dead is a shape of our wandering mourning...

Clear is the cheerful spirit,

which happens to ourselves.

Rilke Sonnets to Orpheus, Second Series, Number 11

Manche, des Todes, entstand ruhig geordnete Regel,
weiterbezwingender Mensch, seit du im Jagen beharrst;
mehr doch als Falle und Netz, weiss ich dich, Streifen von Segel,
den man hinuntergehangt in den höhligen Karst.

Leise liess man dich ein, als wärst du ein Zeichen,
Frieden zu feiern. Doch dann: rang dich am Rande der Knecht,
—und, aus den Höhlen, die Nacht warf eine Hand voll von bleichen
taumelnden Tauben ins Licht ...
                                                            Aber auch das ist im Recht.

Fern von dem Schauenden sei jeglicher Hauch des Bedauerns,
nicht nur vom Jäger allein, der, was sich zeitig erweist,
wachsam und handelnd vollzieht.

Toten ist eine Gestalt unseres wandernden Trauerns . . .
Rein ist im heiteren Geist,
was an uns selber geschieht .

My Fetish Compartment

Odd thing, this morning

I wanted to put something in my old King Edward
Imperial cigar box,

kept in my sock drawer all these years.
A lot of heavy coins in it—
lid came off a long time ago, the sides collapsed.

So I decided to mend it.
It’s important to me—
my fetish compartment.

So I dumped all the contents on the desk top,
including a miniature leather Imitation of Christ,
with the cover worn off,

a tiny address book, a crucifix,
a pound-weight Medtronic ALLEVIATING PAIN,
RESTORING HEALTH, EXTENDING LIFE medal,

some keys and knives, a St. Christopher necklace,
a booth photo of my sister Mary Catherine,
a photo of my father as a four-year-old.

Three pieces at the bottom: a childhood snapshot
of my first lover Lizzie Lea;
then a page ripped from a notebook and faded,

a kind of map—Up, Up! Up!!! to a cliff’s edge,
then a long long fall
and a tiny figure on the ground running

toward a choice of floating upwards, hair hanging
upside-down beside fly-agaric clouds
up at the level of the cliff again,

or taking a low path through the desert
under the sign of the cross and the relentless sun, fading
into angelic cloud shapes at last;

and finally a small Who Is Guru Maharaj Ji? brochure.
Why do I keep it? The Ji devotee
was my friend Victor.

All Who Try to Resist Her, Rainer Maria Von Rilke

All who try to resist her heave to the machine, as long as

she dares to be her own spirit instead of obeying us.
She cuts the stone more precisely to fit
so that the artist’s hand won’t linger at resplendency.

Nowhere does she wait behind, that we might escape her,
and, oiling herself in her silent factory, she answers to herself alone.
She is life, she thinks she does as well as she can,
who with the same decision orders and builds and destroys.

But existence is still enchanted to us; from a hundred
sources it springs anew, a play of pure
untouchable forces that do not kneel and admire.

Words go soft at the unspeakable...
And music, always new, from the shakiest stones,
in needless space, builds her deified house.

Rilke Sonnets to Orpheus, Second Series, Number 10

Alles Erworbene bedroht die Maschine, solange
sie sich erdreistet, im Geist, statt im Gehorchen, zu sein.
Dass nicht der herrlichen Hand schöneres Zögern mehr prange,
zu dem entschlossenern Bau schneidet sie steifer den Stein.

Nirgends bleibt sie zurück, dass wir ihr ein Mal entronnen
und sie in stiller Fabrik ölend sich selber gehört.
Sie ist das Leben,—sie meint es am besten zu können,
die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstört.

Aber noch ist uns das Dasein verzaubert; an hundert
Stellen ist es noch Ursprung. Ein Spielen von reinen
Kräften, die keiner berührt, der nicht kniet und bewundert.

Worte gehen noch zart am Unsäglichen aus ...
Und die Musik, immer neu, aus den bebendsten Steinen,
baut im unbrauchbaren Raum ihr vergöttlichtes Haus .