1977 Version of the Seventh Elegy

THE SEVENTH ELEGY (1977)

1 COURTSHIP no longer, do not let courtship, voice that’s outgrown it,

2 be your cry’s Nature; indeed you might cry as pure as the bird,

3 when raised up by the season ascending, nearly forgetting

4 that the bird is a worrisome animal and not just an individual heart

5 cast into merriment, into the fervent sky. Like the bird

6 you would court, no less —, such that, still unseen,

7 the girlfriend would experience you, the still one in whom

8 an answer slowly awakes and grows warm at the hearing, —

9 for your emboldened emotion, a kindled feminine counterpart.

10 Oh and the springtime would grasp this —, there is no

11 place in it that would not carry the tone of proclamation. First that tiny

12 questioning commencement of sound, around which, with tensifying stillness,

13 a clear and affirmative day would be expansively silent.

14 Then up the steps, the steps of calling, to the dream-built

15 temple of the future —: then the trill, a fountain

16 that for the pressuring spray gathers its falling beforehand

17 in promising play . . . And in front of the springtime, the summer. Not only all the

18 mornings of summer —, not only

19 the way they change into day and are radiant with beginning.

20 Not only the days that gently surround flowers and up above,

21 the arranged trees, staunch and mighty.

22 Not only the contemplation of these unfolded forces,

23 not only the pathways, not only the meadows in evening,

24 not only, after a late-hour thunderstorm, the respiring clearness,

25 not only nearing sleep and an ideation at evening .. .

26 but also the nights! But also the summer’s high

27 nights, but also the stars, the stars of the earth.

28 Oh someday to be dead and know them endlessly,

29 all the stars: for how, how, how to forget them!

30 See, thus I would call the loving woman. But not only she

31 would come . . . There would come forth from

32 languishing graves girls and stand there . . . For how shall I limit,

33 how, the call once it’s called? Those who are sunken still

34 search for earth. — You children, a thing

35 once grasped here would be valid for many.

36 Do not believe that destiny’s more than the cohesion of childhood;

37 how often you passed by the man that you loved, breathing,

38 breathing after a blissful sprint toward nothing, into the open.

39 To be here is glorious. You knew it, girls, even you

40 who seemed deprived and sank —, you in the most vile

41 lanes of the towns, festering or

42 not sheltered from rubbish. For each of you had one hour, perhaps not

43 quite an hour, something hardly measurable in measures of time,

44 between two whiles —, during which she had

45 an existence. Everything. The veins full of existence.

46 Only we forget so easily that which our laughing neighbor

47 doesn’t confirm for us or covet. Visibly

48 we want to uplift it, where even the most visible happiness

49 doesn’t reveal itself to us until we internally transfigure it.

50 Nowhere, beloved, will there be world but internally. Our

51 life goes by in transfiguring. And more and more,

52 outwardness fades. Where once was a lasting house,

53 an imagined construction interposes itself straight across,

54 so wholly belonging to the imaginable as if it all still stood in the brain.

55 Vast storehouses of power are created by the spirit of the time, unarranged

56 like the tensing impulse he draws from all things.

57 Temples he heeds no longer. These extravagances of the heart

58 we more secretly omit. Indeed, where one still lasts on,

59 a thing once prayed to, served, and kneeled —,

60 it projects, just as it is, already out into the invisible.

61 Many perceive it no longer, yet without the advantage

62 that they now build it internally, with columns and statues, huger!

63 Every joyless reverse of the world disinherits some such,

64 to whom the earlier things no longer and not yet the next things belong.

65 For even next things seem far off to humans. Us this

66 should not confuse; let it strengthen in us the safekeeping

67 of the arrangement still perceived. — This stood once among humans,

68 stood in the midst of demolishing destiny, stood in the midst of

69 not-knowing-whither, as if existing, and bent

70 the stars toward itself from skies made secure. Angel,

71 to you I reveal it, there! In your gaze

72 let it stand, saved at last, now finally upright.

73 Columns, pylons, the sphinx, the buttressing upheaval —

74 grey, from disintegrating or alien town — of the cathedral.

75 Wasn’t it miracles? Oh marvel, angel, for it was we,

76 we, oh huge one, recount it, that we achieved such a thing,

77 my breath won’t suffice for such celebration. Thus we have not after all

78 neglected the spaces, these munificent ones, these

79 spaces of ours. (How frightfully huge they must be,

80 since millenia of our feeling have not overfilled them.)

81 But a tower was huge, was it not? Oh angel, it was, —

82 huge even next to you? Chartres was huge —, and music

83 extended still higher and transcended us. Yet even just

84 one loving woman —, oh alone at the nocturnal window

85 did she not reach to your knee —?

86 Do not believe I am courting,

87 angel, and should I even court you! You will not come. For my

88 call is always full of awayness; against so strong

89 a stream you cannot stride. Like an outstretched

90 arm is my call. And open to grip

91 on high, its hand remains open before you,

92 as if warding and warning you off,

93ungraspable one, wide open.