Rosśa Crean

Lyrics

Poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
Translated by Rosśa Crean

Who, when I cried,
Would hear me in the orders of angels?
Suppose one of them holds me to their heart;
I would vanish in their overwhelming presence.
For beauty is nothing but the terrible fear that we can't push away,
And we adore it because of its calming sneers to destroy ourselves.

Every angel is terrifying.

So I control myself,
And bury the dark hithers.
Oh, who can we count on then?
Neither angels, nor men,
And the instinctive animals already know
That we are not comfortable at home
In the deciphered world.

Maybe what remains is some tree on the slope
We can see again every day;
We have the street of yesterday,
And the filthy fidelity of a habit we liked,
So it stayed and did not go.

Oh, and the night, when the wind,
Full of outer space
Gnaws at the face.
That wished for, longed for,
Gently disappointing one,
Waiting arduously for the lonesome heart.

Is it easier for lovers?
Oh, but they use each other to hide their fate.
You still don't understand?
Throw the emptiness in your arms to the spaces we breathe;
Maybe the birds will feel the air expand as they fly
Deeper into themselves.

Yes, the springs probably needed you.
Some stars expected you to sprint to them.
A wave arose, or when you passed an open window,
A violin surrendered itself.
It was all your task, but did you do it?
Were you not distracted by scattered expectation,
As if all of this guaranteed you a lover?
Where would you have sheltered her with all of those strange intrusive thoughts
Passing in and out and staying overnight?)
When yearning overtakes you, sing about the lovers;
Their brilliant passions are far from immortal.

You found that those you envied, the abandoned,
Could love you so much more than those who suckled at their mother's breast.
Always begin anew your search for unreachable praise;
Think: the hero is preserved.
Even his downfall was an excuse for a final birth.
But nature, exhausted, draws all lovers back into herself,
As if that would not take twice the strength.

Have you pondered plenty and Gaspara Stampa?
From that heightened love's example,
Any girl whose lover deserted her can believe:
"If only I could be like her!"
Should this endless pain bring us some profit?
Isn't it time we lovingly freed ourselves from our beloved,
And trembling, insist :
As the arrow endures the string,
And gathered in that momentum,
Becomes more than it is.
Because to stay is to be nowhere.

Voices. Voices. Voices.
Listen, oh heart, as only the saints have heard,
That some monstrous sound lifted them right off the ground;
Yet they knelt and listened intently, those impossible beings.
Not that you could endure the voice of God!
But listen to the breathing, the endless message that forms out of silence,
Rushing to you from those who died so young.
Whenever you entered a church in Rome or Naples,
Did your fate not calmly speak to you?
Or recently, like the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa,
An inscription revealed itself to you.
What do they want from me?
That I quietly dismiss the injustice that hinders the pure movement of spirits.

It is strange, of course, to no longer live on earth,
No longer using what you've hardly learned,
Not giving the meaning of a human future to other promising things,
Like roses.
No longer being what you were an infinitely fearful hands,
Even discarding your own name like a broken toy.
Strange, the wishes no longer wish.
Strange to see everything fluttering so loosely in this room.
And it's tedious being dead, the strain of catching up as you slowly feel a trace of eternity.
But the living make the mistake of absolute distinctions.
Angels, they say, would not often know whether they move along the living or the dead.
The eternal current forever delivers all ages through both realms
While drowning out their voices.

After all, you early raptures no longer need us.
You've been weaned from earthly things as gently as you outgrow your mother's milk.
But we, who need such great mysteries,
Who is blessed progress stems from grief,
Could we exist without them?
Is the saying in vain, how during the lament of Linos,
The first daring music froze the drought,
And only in that startled space, suddenly forsaken by the raw divine,
The void first felt that vibration that sweeps us away,
And consoles and helps us now?