That is the truth:
Nothing happened. Nothing.
We know our roles, and both are large enough
not to mention that. Don’t wait
for the one who stands out from the crowd
– or the one who stands inside it either.
An eternal tune:
don’t speak of the one on death row
cut from the same cloth and remembered
by the same mouth. Only one world
was ours, and that was where we shone;
exchanging everything else to do so.
So, from these outskirts: Happy new world,
Rainer! Happy new sounds!
Everything once seemed to stand in your way,
even passion and friendship. No longer.
Happy new echoes, Rainer!
I used to dream at my school desk about rivers
and mountains. How is your landscape without tourists?
Was I right, Rainer, to think of heaven as stormy
and mountainous – not the way widows imagine?
And not just one heaven, but another over it?
With terraces? Something like the Tatra?
Heaven must resemble an amphitheatre.
Was I right to think of God as a Baobab?
Is there only one God – or another over Him?
I know wherever you are, there are poems.
How do you write without a table for your elbow,
or even a forehead for your cupped hand?
Drop me a line in your usual scrawl!
Death must offer many occasions for poetry.
Are you pleased, Rainer, with your new verse?
I can’t go any further, now I’ve learned
a language with so many new meanings.
Goodbye. Until we meet each other
– if we do – face to face. Look
at the whole earth and the oceans, Rainer.
Look at all of me.
If you can, drop me a scribbled line
– Happy new writing, Rainer – and
I’ll climb a staircase bearing gifts to you
hoping to feel your hand on my head,
I’ll carry my New Year’s glass, without spilling
a tear-drop, over the Rhone and Rarogne
– your resting place – which marks our final parting.
Put this into the hands of Rainer – Maria – Rilke!
from Chapter 1
Hamelin, the good-mannered
town of window-boxes,
well-stocked with
warehouses
Paradise Town!
How God must love
these sensible
townspeople. Every one
is righteous:
Goody-goody, always-right, always-provided-for,
stocked-up-in-time. It’s Paradise Town!
Here are no riddles.
All is smooth and peaceable.
Only good habits in
Paradise
Town.
In God’s sweet
backwater
(The Devil turns his
nose up here):
It’s goody-goody Paradise (owned by Schmidt and Mayers).
A town for an Emperor. Give way to your elders!
Everywhere is tranquil.
No fire. The whole place
must belong to Abel.
Isn’t that
Paradise?
Those who are not
too cold or too hot
travel straight to Hamelin
straight into Hamelin:
Lullaby and ermine-down, this is Paradise Town!
Everywhere is good advice and go-to-sleep on time Town!
First watch!
First watch!
With the world all contact’s lost!
Is the dog out? And the cat in?
Did you hear the early warning.
Take your servants out of harness
Shake your pipe – you’ve time for that –
but leave your workbench now because
‘Morgen ist auch ein tag’
Ten to ten!
Ten to ten.
Put your woolly earplugs in.
In the desk with all your schoolbooks
Set your clocks to ring at five.
Shopkeeper, leave your chalk,
Housewife, your mending.
Look to your feather bed:
‘Morgen ist auch ein tag’
Ten o’clock.
Ten o’clock
No more interruptions.
Keys turned? Bolts drawn?
That was the third call.
Cl-o-ose your Bible, Dad.
Housewife, put your bonnet on.
Hus-band, your nightcap.
‘Morgen ist…’
All asleep.
That’s the Hameliners!
from Chapter 2
Dreams
In all other cities,
in mine, for instance, (out of bounds)
husbands see mermaids, and
wives dream of Byrons.
Children see devils,
and servants see horsemen.
But what can these, Morpheus,
citizens so sinless
dream of at night – Say what?
They don’t need to think hard.
The husband sees – his wife!
The wife sees her husband!
The baby sees a teat.
And that beauty, fat of cheek,
sees a sock of her father’s
that she’s been darning.
The Cook tries the food out.
The ‘Ober’ gives his orders.
It’s all as it ought to be,
all as it ought to be.
As stitches go smoothly
along a knitting needle
Peter sees Paul (what else?).
And Paul sees Peter.
A grandfather dreams of
grandchildren.
Journalists – of some full-stop!
The maid – a kind master.
Commandments for Kaspar.
A sermon for the Pastor.
To sleep has its uses,
it isn’t really wasteful!
The sausage-maker dreams of
poods of fat sausages;
a judge of a pair of scales
(like the apothecary).
Teachers dream of canes.
A tailor of goods for sale.
And a dog of his bone?
Wrong! He sees his collar!
The Cook sees a plucked bird.
The laundress sees velveteen.
Just as it’s been laid down
in the prescription.
And what of the Bürgermeister?
Sleep is like waking
once you are Bürgermeister
what else can you dream about?
Except looking over
the citizens who serve you.
That’s what the Bürgermeister
sees: all his servants!
That’s how things have to be!
That’s how they are arranged!
That’s the prescription!
That’s the prescription!
(My tone may be playful – yes,
the old has some virtue)
So let us not use up
our rhymes over nothing.
As the Bürgermeister sleeps, let’s
slip into his room (Tsar
of Works and Constructions!)
How solidly the building stands…
It’s worth our attention.
from The Children’s Paradise
To live means – ageing,
turning grey relentlessly.
To live is – for those you hate!
Life has no eternal things.
In my kingdom: no butchers, no jails.
Only ice there! Only blue there!
Under the roof of shivering waters
pearls the size of walnuts
girls wear and boys hunt.
There’s – a bath – for everyone.
Pearls are a wondrous illness.
Fall asleep then. Sleep. And vanish.
Dry twigs are grey. Do you want
scarlet? – Try my coral branch!
In my kingdom: no mumps; no measles,
medieval history, serious matters,
no execution of Jan Hus. No discrimination.
No more need for childish terrors.
Only blue. And lovely summer.
Time – for all things – without measure.
Softly, softly, children. You’re
going to a quiet school – under the water.
Run with your rosy cheeks
into the eternal streams.
Someone: Chalk. Someone: Slime.
Someone calling: Got my feet wet.
Someone: Surge. Someone: Rumble.
Someone: Got a gulp of lake!
2
Diving boys and swimming girls
Look, the water’s on their fingers.
Pearls are scattered for them!
The water’s at their ankles,
sneaking up their little knees. They cry:
– Chrys – o – lite.
Red moss! Blue caves!
(Feet go deeper. Skies rise higher.)
Mirror boxes. Crystal balls. Something’s
been left behind, something grows closer…
You’re stuck up to the knees! Careful.
– Ah this chrys-o-prase!
The water is shoulder high on
little mice in schoolday clothes.
Little snub-nose, – higher, higher
now the water’s at your throat.
It’s sweeter than bed linen…
– Crystals! Crystals!
In my kingdom: (The flute sounds the gentlest dolce)
Time dwindles, eyes grow larger.
Is that a sea gull? or is it a baby’s bonnet?
Legs grow heavy, hearts grow lighter.
Water reaches to the chin.
Mourn, friends and relatives!
Isn’t this a fine palace
for the Bürgermeister’s daughter?
Here are eternal dreams, words without pathways.
The flute grows sweeter, hearts more quiet.
Follow without thinking. Listen. No need for thought!
The flute becomes sweeter still, hearts even quieter.
– Mutter. Don’t call me in for supper…
Bu-u-bbles!
1925
Forget us, children. Our conscience
need not belong to you.
You can be free to write the tale
of your own days and passions.
Here in this family album
lies the salt family of Lot.
It is for you to reckon up
the many claims on Sodom.
You didn’t fight your brothers
my curly headed boy!
So this is your time, this is your day.
The land is purely yours.
Sin, cross, quarrel, anger,
these are ours. There have been
too many funerals held by now
for an Eden you’ve never seen
whose fruit you never tasted.
So now, put off your mourning.
Understand: they are blind
who lead you, but then
our quarrel is not your quarrel,
So as you rush from Meudon
and race to the Kuban
children, prepare for battle
in the field of your own days.
January 1932
Homesickness! that long
exposed weariness!
It’s all the same to me now
where I am altogether lonely
or what stones I wander over
home with a shopping bag to
a house that is no more mine
than a hospital or a barracks.
It’s all the same to me, captive
lion what faces I move through
bristling, or what human crowd will
cast me out as it must
into myself, into my separate internal
world, a Kamchatka bear without ice.
Where I fail to fit in (and I’m not trying) or
where I’m humiliated it’s all the same.
And I won’t be seduced by the thought of
my native language, its milky call.
How can it matter in what tongue I
am misunderstood by whoever I meet
(or by what readers, swallowing
newsprint, squeezing for gossip?)
They all belong to the twentieth
century, and I am before time,
stunned, like a log left
behind from an avenue of trees.
People are all the same to me, everything
is the same, and it may be the most
indifferent of all are these
signs and tokens which once were
native but the dates have been
rubbed out: the soul was born somewhere.
For my country has taken so little care
of me that even the sharpest spy could
go over my whole spirit and would
detect no native stain there.
Houses are alien, churches are empty
everything is the same:
But if by the side of the path one
particular bush rises
the rowanberry…
1934
I opened my veins. Unstoppably
life spurts out with no remedy.
Now I set out bowls and plates.
Every bowl will be shallow.
Every plate will be small.
And overflowing their rims,
into the black earth, to nourish
the rushes unstoppably
without cure, gushes
poetry…
1934
1
Just going out for a minute –
left your work (which the idle
call chaos) behind on the table.
And left the chair behind when you went where?
I ask around all Paris, for it’s
only in stories or pictures
that people rise to the skies:
where is your soul gone, where?
In the cupboard, two-doored like a shrine,
look all your books are in place.
In each line the letters are there.
Where has it gone to, your face?
Your face
your warmth
your shoulder
where did they go?
2
Useless with eyes like nails to
penetrate the black soil
As true as a nail in the mind
you are not here, not here.
It’s useless turning my eyes
and fumbling round the whole sky.
Rain.
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