From Then and Now – Opus 3, No 1 (The Death of Innocence)
Rainer Maria Rilke:
ORPHEUS. EURYDICE. HERMES
It was a strange dark mine of souls –
As still as silver ore, they pulsed
Like arteries in its darkness. Blood
Welled up through roots, flowed off into people,
Seeming as heavy as porphyry.
Otherwise no red –
Only rocks
And unreal woods; bridges over nothing;
And that great grey blind lake which hung
Above its distant bed like clouds
Of rain above a landscape. But also,
Between soft meadows full of patience,
A single path – like a pale strip
Of linen laid in the sun to bleach.
And on this single path they came.
In front the slender man in blue –
Wordless, impatient, staring ahead,
With steps which took great bites of the way,
Swallowing them whole. His heavy hands
Hung clenched among his garment’s folds,
No longer aware of the light lyre
Twined round the left, a climbing rose
Growing in the boughs of an olive.
His sight and hearing seemed to divide,
In that the first, like a dog, ran off
Ahead – turned round – came back – stood waiting
Again in the distance by the next
Turning, whereas his hearing hung
Behind like an odour, almost as far
Back as the footsteps of the two
He hoped were following him on up
The slope. But only distant echoes
Of his ascent, his cloak’s swish, reached
His ears. They’re coming, though, he said
Out loud – hearing his words re-echo…
And so they were. But terribly,
Terribly quietly. Had he turned then
(And with that single backward look
Ended this work), he might have seen
Them, seen how quiet they were, unspeaking:
He – the message-bearing god of travel,
His hood pulled over his bright eyes,
With wings which fluttered round his ankles,
Raising his slender staff of office –
And, guided by his left hand, she.
So greatly loved that, from his lyre,
More wailing issued than from mourning
Women – a world of wailing, where
All things were present: wood and valley –
Village and road – river, field, and beast –
Even, to make this wailing world
Just like the other Earth, a sun –
And a still and starry sky which wheeled
And wailed: a sky with disfigured stars...
So greatly loved.
She, though, hand in hand with the god,
Her short steps hampered by her shroud,
Uncertain, gentle, and unhurried,
Sunk in herself, in her gravid being,
Gave no thought to the man in front
Nor to the pathway leading to life:
Sunk in herself. Her presence in death
Utterly fulfilled her.
She was as full of her great death
As a fruit is full of sweetness and darkness:
A death so new that she grasped nothing.
She had become a girl again
And was not to be touched. Her sex had closed,
Like a young flower at dusk; her hands
Had grown so unaccustomed there
To marriage that even the weightless god’s
Infinitely delicate guiding touch
Seemed too familiar, seemed offensive.
She was no longer that blonde woman
Echoing here and there through his poems:
No more their broad bed’s scent, its island,
And that man’s property no more:
She was already loosened, like
Long hair – dispersed, like fallen rain –
And shared, like an abundant hoard.
She was already root.
And when the god
Stopped her abruptly, pained and blurting
The words, He has turned round! she still
Grasped nothing but asked quietly, Who?...
– Far off, though, dark in the bright way out,
Somebody stood, whose countenance
She could not see. He stood and watched
How on a narrow path between meadows
The message-bearing god, with grief
In his look, turned quietly round and followed
Her form returning now the same way,
Her steps still hindered by her shroud,
Uncertain, gentle, and unhurried.
Rainer Maria Rilke:
ORPHEUS. EURYDICE. HERMES
It was a strange dark mine of souls –
As still as silver ore, they pulsed
Like arteries in its darkness. Blood
Welled up through roots, flowed off into people,
Seeming as heavy as porphyry.
Otherwise no red –
Only rocks
And unreal woods; bridges over nothing;
And that great grey blind lake which hung
Above its distant bed like clouds
Of rain above a landscape. But also,
Between soft meadows full of patience,
A single path – like a pale strip
Of linen laid in the sun to bleach.
And on this single path they came.
In front the slender man in blue –
Wordless, impatient, staring ahead,
With steps which took great bites of the way,
Swallowing them whole. His heavy hands
Hung clenched among his garment’s folds,
No longer aware of the light lyre
Twined round the left, a climbing rose
Growing in the boughs of an olive.
His sight and hearing seemed to divide,
In that the first, like a dog, ran off
Ahead – turned round – came back – stood waiting
Again in the distance by the next
Turning, whereas his hearing hung
Behind like an odour, almost as far
Back as the footsteps of the two
He hoped were following him on up
The slope. But only distant echoes
Of his ascent, his cloak’s swish, reached
His ears. They’re coming, though, he said
Out loud – hearing his words re-echo…
And so they were. But terribly,
Terribly quietly. Had he turned then
(And with that single backward look
Ended this work), he might have seen
Them, seen how quiet they were, unspeaking:
He – the message-bearing god of travel,
His hood pulled over his bright eyes,
With wings which fluttered round his ankles,
Raising his slender staff of office –
And, guided by his left hand, she.
So greatly loved that, from his lyre,
More wailing issued than from mourning
Women – a world of wailing, where
All things were present: wood and valley –
Village and road – river, field, and beast –
Even, to make this wailing world
Just like the other Earth, a sun –
And a still and starry sky which wheeled
And wailed: a sky with disfigured stars...
So greatly loved.
She, though, hand in hand with the god,
Her short steps hampered by her shroud,
Uncertain, gentle, and unhurried,
Sunk in herself, in her gravid being,
Gave no thought to the man in front
Nor to the pathway leading to life:
Sunk in herself. Her presence in death
Utterly fulfilled her.
She was as full of her great death
As a fruit is full of sweetness and darkness:
A death so new that she grasped nothing.
She had become a girl again
And was not to be touched. Her sex had closed,
Like a young flower at dusk; her hands
Had grown so unaccustomed there
To marriage that even the weightless god’s
Infinitely delicate guiding touch
Seemed too familiar, seemed offensive.
She was no longer that blonde woman
Echoing here and there through his poems:
No more their broad bed’s scent, its island,
And that man’s property no more:
She was already loosened, like
Long hair – dispersed, like fallen rain –
And shared, like an abundant hoard.
She was already root.
And when the god
Stopped her abruptly, pained and blurting
The words, He has turned round! she still
Grasped nothing but asked quietly, Who?...
– Far off, though, dark in the bright way out,
Somebody stood, whose countenance
She could not see. He stood and watched
How on a narrow path between meadows
The message-bearing god, with grief
In his look, turned quietly round and followed
Her form returning now the same way,
Her steps still hindered by her shroud,
Uncertain, gentle, and unhurried.
