Eighth Elegy 2007

THE EIGHTH ELEGY

dedicated to Rudolf Kassner

VIII 1 With all its eyes, the animal sees

VIII 2 openness. Only our eyes are

VIII 3 as if reversed and placed all round it

VIII 4 as traps around its free emergence.

VIII 5 What exists outside we know from the animal’s

VIII 6 visage only: for already, the early child

VIII 7 we reverse and force it to see arrangement

VIII 8 backwards, not the open world that

VIII 9 is so deeply set in the animal face. Free of death,

VIII 10 which we alone can see. The untrammelled animal

VIII 11 has its annihilation constantly behind it

VIII 12 and God before it, and when it walks, it walks

VIII 13 in eternity, the way the fountains flow.

VIII 14 We never, not a single day, have

VIII 15 open space before us into which the flowers

VIII 16 endlessly unfold. Always it is “world”

VIII 17 and never “nowhere” without “not”: the pure,

VIII 18 not watched over, that one breathes and

VIII 19 endlessly knows and does not crave. As a child one

VIII 20 might silently get lost in it and then be

VIII 21 shaken. Or someone dies and is it.

VIII 22 For near to death, one sees death no longer

VIII 23 and stares outside, perhaps with the huge gaze of animals.

VIII 24 Lovers, if their partners were not, who

VIII 25 obstruct the view, are near to this and marvel…

VIII 26 As if by oversight, it’s divulged to them

VIII 27 what’s behind the partners…But beyond

VIII 28 them none can pass, and again one has “world.”

VIII 29 Turned toward creation always, we only see

VIII 30 upon it the reflection of the untrammeled,

VIII 31 obscured by us. Or that an animal,

VIII 32 a mute one, looks up, calmly, right through us.

VIII 33 This is called destiny: to be a counterpart

VIII 34 and nothing else and always counterpart.

VIII 35 Were there awareness of our species in the

VIII 36 assured animal that comes toward us

VIII 37 in the opposite direction —, it would wrench us round

VIII 38 with its ambulation. But for it, its own existence is

VIII 39 endless, ungrasped, and without scrutiny

VIII 40 of its condition, pure, like its outgoing gaze.

VIII 41 And where we see future, it sees all things there

VIII 42 and itself within all things and healed forever.

VIII 43 And yet inside the watchfully warm animal there is

VIII 44 weight and anxiousness of massive melancholy.

VIII 45 For there adheres to it always a trace of that which

VIII 46 often overwhelms us, — remembrance,

VIII 47 as if the things for which one presses on had once

VIII 48 been nearer and their attachment

VIII 49 endlessly tender. Here, all is detachment

VIII 50 and there it was breath. After the first homeland,

VIII 51 the second seems equivocal and windy.

VIII 52 Oh the bliss of the tiny creature

VIII 53 that always stays inside the womb that bore it;

VIII 54 oh happiness of the gnat that still hops in it

VIII 55 even during matrimony: for womb is everything.

VIII 56 And see the semi-sureness of the bird

VIII 57 who almost knows both things from its origin,

VIII 58 as if it were a soul of some Etruscan

VIII 59 of a deceased encompassed by a space,

VIII 60 but with the sleeping effigy as lid.

VIII 61 And how alarmed is one that has to fly

VIII 62 and is derived from womb. As if startled by itself,

VIII 63 it quivers through the air the way a crack

VIII 64 would cross a cup. Thus the bat’s trail

VIII 65 rends the porcelain of evening.

VIII 66 And we: spectators, always, everywhere,

VIII 67 turned toward all this and never out beyond it!

VIII 68 It overfills us. We arrange it. It disintegrates.

VIII 69 We again arrange it and disintegrate ourselves.

VIII 70 Who is it that reversed us thus, that we,

VIII 71 whatever we may do, present the attitude

VIII 72 of someone who’s departing? Just as he, upon

VIII 73 the final hill that reveals to him once more all

VIII 74 his valley, turns round, stops, and lingers —,

VIII 75 thus we live and take our leave forever.

Click here to go to 2007 English version of the Ninth Elegy

Click here to go to German Text of the Ninth Elegy

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