[Untitled]
Translated from Rilke
Du kommst und gehst. Die Türen fallen
viel sanfter zu, fast ohne Wehn.
Du bist der Leiseste von allen,
die durch die leisen Häuser gehn.
Man kann sich so an dich gewӧhnen,
dass man nicht aus dem Buche schaut,
wenn seine Bilder sich verschӧnen,
von deinem Schatten überblaut;
weil dich die Dinge immer tӧnen
nur einmal leis und einmal laut.
Oft, wenn ich dich in Sinnen sehe,
verteilt sich deine Allgestalt;
Du gehst wie lauter lichte Rehe,
und ich bin dunkel und bin Wald.
Du bist ein Rad, an dem ich stehe;
von deinen vielen dunklen Achsen
wird immer wieder eine schwer
und dreht sich näher zu mir her,
und meine willigen Werke wachsen
von Wiederkehr zu Wiederkehr.
[Untitled]
You come and go. The doors slip-to
in silence when you chance to call.
You, among those who tiptoe through
hushed houses, are most hushed of all.
One can grow used to you, so much
as not to glance up from one’s book,
whose images gain a blue touch
of beauty in your shadowed look;
for things bring out your tone with such
as now is loud and now is hushed.
Often, when my thoughts see you here,
your all-united form unfolds;
you move like pure and bright roe deer,
and I am darkened and am woods.
You are a wheel that I stand near:
among your many somber axles
one keeps on adding to its weight
and turning near my silent state,
and my responsive works keep waxing
as you appear and reappear.
Translator Donald Williams is a retired newspaper writer-editor and also a former professor. His Rilke translations have run in Metamorphoses, Measure, and Blue Unicorn; his original poems in more than forty journals and also in his book Wolfe and Other Poems. His pastoral novel The Sparrow and the Hall is set in seventh-century Northumberland.