Seventh Elegy 2007

THE SEVENTH ELEGY

VII 1 Courtship no longer, not courtship, outgrown voice,

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

VII 3 when raised up by the season ascending, nearly forgetting

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

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

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

VII 7 the maiden would sense you, the still one in whom an answer

VII 8 slowly awakes and grows warm at the hearing, —

VII 9 for your emboldened male comrade in feeling the glowing female comrade in feeling

VII 10 Oh and the springtime would compass this —, no place in it

VII 11 would not convey the tone of announcement. First that tiny.

VII 12 questioning sonance, around which,

VII 13 in augmenting stillness, a clear concurring day.

VII 14 Then up the steps, the steps of calling, to the dreamed

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

VII 16 that for the pressuring spray gathers its falling beforehand

VII 17 in promiseful play . . . And in front of the springtime, the summer.

VII 18 Not only all the mornings of summer —, not only

VII 19 how they transform into day and radiate inception.

VII 20 Not only the days winsome around the flowers, and above,

VII 21 the sculptured trees, staunch and mighty.

VII 22 Not only the contemplation of these unfolded forces,

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

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

VII 25 Not only impending sleep and a surmise at evening . . .

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

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

VII 28 Oh someday to be dead and know them endlessly,

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

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

VII 31 would come . . . There would come forth from languishing graves

VII 32 maidens and stand there . . . For how shall I limit,

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

VII 34 search for earth. — You children, a thing

VII 35 once grasped here would be valid for many.

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

VII 37 how often you overtook the man that you loved, breathing,

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

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

VII 40 who seemingly renounced and sank —, you in the most vile

VII 41 lanes of the towns, festering or open to rubbish.

VII 42 Since each of you for one hour, perhaps not

VII 43 a whole hour, hardly measurable in spans of time,

VII 44 between two whiles —, during which she had an

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

VII 46 Only we forget so easily that which our laughing neighbour

VII 47 doesn’t confirm for us or covet. Visibly

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

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

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

VII 51 life goes hence in transfiguring. And ever more meager

VII 52 outwardness fades. Where once was An enduring house,

VII 53 an imagined construct interposes itself, oblique, so wholly of

VII 54 the imaginable as if it all still stood in the brain.

VII 55 The spirit of time, creates east repositories of power

VII 56 like the tensing impulse he wins from all things.

VII 57 Temples he knows heeds no longer. These, the heart’s extravagances

VII 58 we more secretly retrench. Indeed, where one still endures

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

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

VII 61 Many descry it no longer, yet without the advantage

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

VII 63 Every joyless reverse of the world has some such disinherited,

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

VII 65 For even the next seems remote to humans. Us this

VII 66 should not bemuse; let it strengthen in us the safekeeping

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

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

VII 69 of not-knowing-whither it stood, as if existing, and bent

VII 70 the stars toward itself from unassailable skies. Angel,

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

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

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

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

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

VII 76 we, oh you vast one, recount it, that we achieved such a thing, my breath

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

VII 78 bypassed the spaces, these munificent ones, these

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

VII 80 since millenia of our feeling do not overfill them.)

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

VII 82 vast even next to you? Chartres was huge —,

and music

VII 83 extended still higher and transcended us. Yet even just

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

VII 85 did she not reach to your knee —?

VII 86 Do not believe I am courting,

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

VII 88 summons is always full of awayness; against so strong

VII 89 a streaming you cannot stride. Like an outstretched

VII 90 arm is my summons. And open to grip

VII 91 on high, its hand remains open before you,

VII 92 as if warding and warning you off,

VII 93 ungraspable one, wide open.

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

Click here to go to German Source Text of the Eighth Elegy

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