Ninth Duino Elegy

Ninth Duino Elegy

(excerpt)

Praise the world to the angel: leave the unsayable aside.

Your exalted feelings do not move him.

In the universe, where he feels feelings, you are a beginner.

Therefore show him what is ordinary, what has been

shaped from generation to generation, shaped by hand and eye.

Tell him of things. He will stand still in astonishment,

the way you stood by the ropemaker in Rome

or beside the potter on the Nile.

Show him how happy a thing can be, how innocent and ours,

how even a lament takes pure form,

serves as a thing, dies as a thing,

while the violin, blessing it, fades.

And the things, even as they pass,

understand that we praise them.

Transient, they are trusting us

to save them - us, the most transient of all.

As if they wanted in our invisible hearts

to be transformedinto - oh, endlessly - into us.

Earth, isn't this what you want? To arise in us, invisible?

Is it not your dream, to enter us so wholly

there's nothing left outside us to see?

What, if not transformation,

is your deepest purpose? Earth, my love,

I want that too. Believe me,

no more of your springtimes are needed

to win me over - even one flower

is more than enough. Before I was named

I belonged to you. I seek no other law

but yours, and know I can trust

the death you will bring.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

(In Praise of Mortality, trans. and edited Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)


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