Love Song / Rilke

How can I keep my soul in me, so that 

it doesn't touch your soul? 

How can I raise it high enough, 

past you, to other things? 

I would like to shelter it, 

among remote lost objects, 

in some dark and silent place 

that doesn't resonate when your depths resound. 

Yet everything that touches us, 
me and you,takes us together 
like a violin's bow, which draws 
one voice out of two separate strings. 

Upon what instrument are we two spanned? 

And what musician holds us in his hand? 

Oh sweetest song.

Mayakovsky // Frank O'Hara

1
My heart's aflutter!
I am standing in the bath tub
crying. Mother, mother
who am I? If he
will just come back once
and kiss me on the face
his coarse hair brush
my temple, it's throbbing!

then I can put on my clothes
I guess, and walk the streets.

2
I love you. I love you,
but I'm turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist.

Words! be
sick as I am sick, swoon,
roll back your eyes, a pool,

and I'll stare down
at my wounded beauty
which at best is only a talent
for poetry.

Cannot please, cannot charm or win
what a poet!
and the clear water is thick

with bloody blows on its head.
I embrace a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained.

3
That's funny! there's blood on my chest
oh yes, I've been carrying bricks
what a funny place to rupture!
and now it is raining on the ailanthus
as I step out onto the window ledge
the tracks below me are smoky and
glistening with a passion for running
I leap into the leaves, green like the sea

4
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.








Frank O'Hara

Well into Winter

The moon goes down like a coin. Spent,
even memory is becoming a memory.

Any tree would seem to grieve,
what with the hawk lonelinessing
on her desiccated perch.
Her feathers are the opposite of snow.

The day has never been so much the night
and vice versa. And the afternoon
never so much the afternoon.
Meanwhile, meanwhile.

Years ago, a child put a coin
in the crook of this tree.
Now, the sun is drawn up
like a pail from a well.
The pail is poured out and snow.

—John Poch, “Well into Winter.

Evening / Rainer Maria Rilke

Evening
Rainer Maria Rilke

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;

you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;

and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion
of what becomes a star each night, and rises;

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.

#1705 Emily Dickinson

#1705

Volcanoes be in Sicily
And South America
I judge from my Geography
Volcanoes nearer here
A Lava step at any time
Am I inclined to climb
A Crater I may contemplate
Vesuvius at Home

Einsamkeit (Loneliness)

Einsamkeit (Loneliness) by Rilke, 1902, translated by Philipp Kellmeyer

#0.
Loneliness is like a rain.
It rises from the sea toward evening;
from plains, which are distant and remote,
it goes to the sky, which always has it.
And only then it falls from the sky on the city.

It rains down in the twilight hours,
when all streets turn towards morning 
and all bodies, which have found nothing, 
leave each other, sad and let down; 
and people who hate each other, 
have to sleep together in one bed:

then solitude flows with the rivers... 


#1.

Loneliness is like a rain.
It raises from the sea towards the evenings;
from plains that are far and remote,
it goes to heaven, that always has it.
And only from the skies does it fall on the city.

Pours down in the twilight hours,
when all streets turn towards morning
and all bodies, which have found nothing,
leave each other, sad and let down;
and when people who hate each other,
have to sleep together in one bed:

then loneliness goes with the rivers…

#2.
Solitude is like a rain.
It rises from the sea toward evening;
from plains, which are distant and remote,
it goes to the sky, which always has it.
And only then it falls from the sky on the city.

It rains down in the in-between hours,
when all the crooked streets turn toward morning,
and when the bodies, which found nothing,
leave each other feeling sad and disappointed;

and when the people, who hate each other,
have to sleep together in one bed:

then solitude flows with the rivers... 

  

                                                  #

the original text in German 

Einsamkeit

Die Einsamkeit ist wie ein Regen.
Sie steigt vom Meer den Abenden entgegen;
von Ebenen, die fern sind und entlegen,
geht sie zum Himmel, der sie immer hat.
Und erst vom Himmel fällt sie auf die Stadt.

Regnet hernieder in den Zwitterstunden,
wenn sich nach Morgen wenden alle Gassen
und wenn die Leiber, welche nichts gefunden,
enttäuscht und traurig von einander lassen;
und wenn die Menschen, die einander hassen,
in einem Bett zusammen schlafen müssen:

dann geht die Einsamkeit mit den Flüssen...

Rainer Maria Rilke, 21.9.1902, Paris

The Wait / Rainer Maria Rilke

The Wait

It is life in slow motion,
it's the heart in reverse,
it's a hope-and-a-half:
too much and too little at once.

It's a train that suddenly
stops with no station around,
and we can hear the cricket,
and, leaning out the carriage

door, we vainly contemplate
a wind we feel that stirs
the blooming meadows, the meadows
made imaginary by this stop.


Translated by A. Poulin


Rainer Maria Rilke