A tradition and a variation
Sep. 1st, 2023 07:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radiantfractureAutumn Day
Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
Lord, it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows
and on the meadows let the wind go free.
Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine:
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.
Whoever has no house now, will never have one
whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening
and wander on the boulevards up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.
And a variation (incomplete)
Friends, here we are: the summer stretched and shrank
like a slinky as it lurched
headless into the fall. Each squeaky step
announced a question.
From the fire, imprinted on his clay
surface, an indelible story,
an incised script I read over and over,
not for its sense, but for its mystery.
Always the same question:
what did we make
of what we were given?
The lattice of purple apples and the tree
with her mother’s name — June —
offered their fragrance as we heaped
her furniture in the kitchen.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
Lord, it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows
and on the meadows let the wind go free.
Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine:
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.
Whoever has no house now, will never have one
whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening
and wander on the boulevards up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.
And a variation (incomplete)
Friends, here we are: the summer stretched and shrank
like a slinky as it lurched
headless into the fall. Each squeaky step
announced a question.
From the fire, imprinted on his clay
surface, an indelible story,
an incised script I read over and over,
not for its sense, but for its mystery.
Always the same question:
what did we make
of what we were given?
The lattice of purple apples and the tree
with her mother’s name — June —
offered their fragrance as we heaped
her furniture in the kitchen.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-01 03:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-09-01 03:28 pm (UTC)I've loved that Rilke from the first time I came across it, and I do like your variation. My summer was slinky-like too.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-03 03:56 pm (UTC)Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2023-09-01 05:16 pm (UTC)I love this. I'm not sure it needs to be complete.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-03 01:57 am (UTC)Thank you! I did feel the voice upon me a little, in the half-hour before the hotel breakfast.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-01 08:57 pm (UTC)what did we make
of what we were given?
I know I respond to a lot of things with "big mood" but this is the best encapsulation of how I'm feeling right now that it's not even funny.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-03 01:58 am (UTC)I was thinking of it on an individual level, but then this comment makes me think of the macro as well