A tradition and a variation

[radiantfracture]

Autumn 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.

Comments

[flemmings]

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.

[radiantfracture]

Thank you!