Rilke's Final Duino Elegy
Duino Elegies: The Tenth Elegy • 69
THE TENTH ELEGY
One day, when this terrifying vision's vanished,
let me sing ecstatic praise to angels saying yes!
Let my heart's clear-struck keys ring and not one
fail because of a doubting, slack, or breaking string.
Let my streaming face make me more radiant, [5]
my tiny tears bloom. And then how dear
you'll be to me, you nights of anguish.
Sisters of despair, why didn't I kneel lower
to receive you, surrender myself more loosely
into your flowing hair. We waste our sufferings. [10]
We stare into that boring endurance beyond them
looking for their end. But they're nothing more
than our winter trees, our dark evergreen, one
of the seasons in our secret years - not just a season,
but a place, a settlement, a camp, soil, a home. [15]
But, oh, how strange the streets of the City of Pain
really are. In the seeming silence of noise against noise,
violent, like something cast from a mold of the Void,
the glittering confusion, the collapsing monument swaggers.
Oh, how an angel could stamp out their market of comforts, [20]
with the church nearby, bought ready-made, clean,
shut, and disappointed as a post office on Sunday.
But on the outskirts there's always the fair's spinning rim.
Swings of freedom! High-divers and jugglers of excitement!
And the lifelike shooting galleries of garish luck: [25]
targets tumbling off the rack to the ring of tin
when a good-shot hits one. He reels through applause
toward more lock; booths that can tempt the queerest
tastes are drumming and barking. For adults only
there's something special to see: coins copulating, [30]
not just acting, but actually, their gold genitals, every
thing, the whole operation - educational and guaranteed
to arouse you . . .
Oh, but just outside, behind
the last billboards plastered with posters of "Deathless," [35]
the bitter beer so sweet to those who drink it
while chewing on plenty of fresh distractionsjust
behind the billboards, right behind them, the real.
Children are playing. to one side lovers are holding each
other,
earnest in the thinning grass, and dogs are doing nature's
bidding. [40]
The young man walks farther on. Maybe he's in love with
a young
Lament. .. He follows her into the fields. She says:
"It's far. We Jive out there."
Where? And the young man
follows. He's moved by her ways: her shoulders, her
neck - [45]
maybe she comes from a noble family. But he leaves her,
turns back,
looks around, waves ... What's the use? She's only a
Lament.
Only those who die young, those in their first
moments of timeless serenity, just being weaned,
follow her lovingly. She waits for girls [50]
and befriends them. Gently she shows them
what she's wearing: pearls of pain
and the fine-spun veils of patience.
With young men she walks silently.
But there, in the valley where they live, one of the older [55]
Laments listens to the young man's questions. She says:
"We were a great clan, once, we Laments. Our fathers
worked the mines in that mountain range. Sometimes
you'll find a polished lump of ancient sorrow among men,
or petrified rage from the slag of some old volcano. [60]
Yes, that came from there. We used to be rich."
And she gently guides him through the immense Land
of Lamentation, showing him columns of temples or ruins
of the castles where the Lords of Lament wisely ruled
the country long ago. She shows him the tall trees [65]
of tears, the flowering fields of sadness
(the living know them only as tender leaves);
she shows him herds of pasturing grief; and sometimes
a frightened bird flying across their line of vision
scrawls the huge glyph of its desolate cry. [70]
In the evening she leads him to the grave of the elders,
the sybils and prophets of the House of Lamentation.
But as night comes on, they walk more slowly, and soon
the tomb that watches over all rises bright
as moonlight; brother to the one on the Nile, [75J
the stupendous Sphinx: the secret chamber's face.
And they're stunned by the crowned head
that has silently poised
the features of man
on the scale of stars forever. [80J
Still dizzy from just having died, his look
can't take it in. But hers frightens
an owl from behind the double crown's rim.
And with slow, skimming strokes, the bird brushes
the cheek, the one with the fullest curve; [85]
and on the dead's newborn hearing,
as on facing pages of an opened book,
he faintly traces the indescribable outline.
And higher, the stars. New ones. Stars of the Land
of Grief. The Lament slowly names them: "Look, there: [90]
the Rider, the Staff, and they call that bigger
constellation Garland of Fruit. Then farther toward
the Pole: Cradle, Road, The Burning Book, Doll, Window.
But in the southern sky, pure as the palm
of a consecrated hand, the bright shining M - (95]
that stands for Mothers . . ."
But the dead must go on, and silently
the old Lament brings him as far as
the gorge, where it shines in moonlight:
the source of joy. Naming it (100]
reverently, she says: "It is
an enduring stream among men."
They stand at the foot of the mountains.
And there she embraces him, weeping.
He climbs the mountains of primal pain alone. [105]
And not once does his step ring from that mute fate.
Yet, if those forever dead were waking an image
in us, look, they might point to the catkins
hanging from the empty hazels, or maybe mean
the rain falling on the dark earth in early spring. [110]
And we, who have always thought of joy
as rising, would feel the emotion
that almost amazes us
when a happy thing fulls. [114]
..