Poems- Not your own.

[Cicero]

I heart Rilke. I love his short stories and would love a copy of his "dreambook" in english but I am afraid that does not exist. I am not learning German just to read it either.

Requiem for a Friend Part I
(Paula Modersohn-Becker 1876-1907)



I have dead ones, and I have let them go,
and was astonished to see them so peaceful,

so quickly at home in being dead, so just,

so other than their reputation. Only you, you turn

back: you brush against me, and go by, you try

to knock against something, so that it resounds

and betrays you. O don’t take from me what I

am slowly learning. I’m sure you err

when you deign to be homesick at all

for any Thing. We change them round:

they are not present, we reflect them here

out of our being, as soon as we see them.

I thought you were much further on. It disturbs me

that you especially err and return, who have

changed more than any other woman.

That we were frightened when you died, no, that

your harsh death broke in on us darkly,

tearing the until-then from the since-that:

it concerns us: that it become a unique order

is the task we must always be about.

But that even you were frightened, and now too

are in terror, where terror is no longer valid:

that you lose a little of your eternity, my friend,

and that you appear here, where nothing

yet is: that you, scattered for the first time,

scattered and split in the universe,

that you did not grasp the rise of events,

as here you grasped every Thing:

that from the cycle that has already received you

the silent gravity of some unrest

pulls you down to measured time –

this often wakes me at night like a thief breaking in.

And if only I might say that you deign to come

out of magnanimity, out of over-fullness,

because so certain, so within yourself,

that you wander about like a child, not anxious

in the face of anything one might do –

but no: you are asking. This enters so

into my bones, and cuts like a saw.

A reproach, which you might offer me, as a ghost,

impose on me, when I withdraw at night,

into my lungs, into the innards,

into the last poor chamber of my heart –

such a reproach would not be as cruel

as this asking is. What do you ask?

Say, shall I travel? Have you left some Thing

behind somewhere, that torments itself

and yearns for you? Shall I enter a land

you never saw, though it was close to you

like the other side of your senses?

I will travel its rivers: go ashore

and ask about its ancient customs:

speak to women in their doorways

and watch when they call their children.

I’ll note how they wrap the landscape

round them, going about their ancient work

in meadow and field: I’ll demand

to be led before their king, and I’ll

win their priests with bribes to place me

in front of their most powerful statues,

and leave, and close the temple gates.

Only then when I know enough, will I

simply look at creatures, so that something

of their manner will glide over my limbs:

and I will possess a limited being

in their eyes, which hold me and slowly

release me, calmly, without judgment.

I’ll let the gardeners recite many flowers

to me, so that I might bring back

in the fragments of their lovely names

a remnant of their hundred perfumes.

And I’ll buy fruits, fruits in which that land

exists once more, as far as the heavens.

That is what you understood: the ripe fruits.

You placed them in bowls there in front of you

and weighed out their heaviness with pigments.

And so you saw women as fruits too,

and saw the children likewise, driven

from inside into the forms of their being.

And you saw yourself in the end as a fruit,

removed yourself from your clothes, brought

yourself in front of the mirror, allowed yourself

within, as far as your gaze that stayed huge outside

and did not say: ‘I am that’: no, rather: ‘this is.’

So your gaze was finally free of curiosity

and so un-possessive, of such real poverty,

it no longer desired self: was sacred.

So I’ll remember you, as you placed yourself

within the mirror, deep within and far

from all. Why do you appear otherwise?

What do you countermand in yourself? Why

do you want me to believe that in the amber beads

at your throat there was still some heaviness

of that heaviness that never exists in the other-side

calm of paintings: why do you show me

an evil presentiment in your stance:

what do the contours of your body mean,

laid out like the lines on a hand,

so that I no longer see them except as fate?

Come here, to the candlelight. I’m not afraid

to look on the dead. When they come

they too have the right to hold themselves out

to our gaze, like other Things.

Come here: we’ll be still for a while.

See this rose, close by on my desk:

isn’t the light around it precisely as hesitant

as that over you: it too shouldn’t be here.

Outside in the garden, unmixed with me,

it should have remained or passed –

now it lives, so: what is my consciousness to it?

Don’t be afraid if I understand now, ah,

it climbs in me: I can do no other,

I must understand, even if I die of it.

Understand, that you are here. I understand.

Just as a blind man understands a Thing,

I feel your fate and do not know its name

Let us grieve together that someone drew you

out of your mirror. Can you still weep?

You cannot. You turned the force and pressure

of your tears into your ripe gaze,

and every juice in you besides

you added into a heavy reality,

that climbed and spun in balance blindly.

Then chance tore at you, a final chance

tore you back from your furthest advance,

back into a world where juices have will.

Not tearing you wholly: tore only a piece at first,

but when around this piece, day after day

reality grew, so that it became heavy,

you needed your whole self: you went

and broke yourself, in pieces, out of its control,

painfully, out, because you needed yourself. Then

you lifted yourself out, and dug the still green seeds

out of the night-warmed earth of your heart,

from which your death would rise: yours,

your own death for your own life.

And ate them, the kernels of your death,

like all the others, ate the kernels,

and found an aftertaste of sweetness

you did not expect, found sweetness on the lips,

you: who were already sweet within your senses.

O let us grieve. Do you know how your blood

hesitated in its unequalled gyre, and reluctantly

returned, when you called it back?

How confused it was to take up once more

the body’s narrow circulation: how full of mistrust

and amazement, entering into the placenta,

and suddenly tired by the long way back.

You drove it on: you pushed it along,

you dragged it to the fireplace, as one

drags a herd-animal to the sacrifice:

and still wished that it would be happy too.

And you finally forced it: it was happy

and ran over to you and gave itself up. You thought

because you’d grown used to other rules,

it was only for a while: but

now you were within Time, and Time is long.

And Time runs on, and Time takes away, and Time

is like a relapse in a lengthy illness.