Poetic Flight

                 For H. S. in reply to his poem
Don't trust too much in books: they only share
what has been and will be. Try to be stronger,
grasp something that now is. And then no longer
your ripeness will be all. We're children there,

where things stand, infinitely overtasking
all that is trying to multiply in us;
we only guess — our saying's a kind of asking,
but they're self-centered and autonomous.

You that once started working for Life's prize
as though you hoped in course of time to win it,
you'll find the smallest has a master in it
the deepest in you never satisfies.
                     Venice, c. 20 November 1907
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Poems 1906-1926: Rainer Maria Rilke, J. B. Leishman (tr.), p. 100.


                              Death
There, a blue draught for somebody to drain,
stands Death, in a large cup without a saucer.
A rather odd position for a cup:
stands on the back of a hand. And still quite plain
and visible along the smooth glazed slope
the place where the handle snapped. Dusty. And 'Hope'
inscribed in letters half washed down the sink.

The drinker destinated for the drink
spelt them at breakfast in some distant past.

What kind of creatures these are, that at last
have to be poisoned off, it's hard to think.

Else, would they stay? Has this hard food, in fact,
such power to infatuate,
they'd eat for ever, did not some hand extract
the crusty present, like a dental-plate?

Which leaves them babbling. Bab, bab, ba  .  .  .
.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

O falling star,
seen from a bridge once in a foreign land: —
remembering you, to stand!
                  Munich, 9 November 1915
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Ibid., p. 218.


Since to bear you over such abysses
soaring rapture would so often serve,
build at last the unimagined bridge's
boldly calculable curve.

Miracle's not unexplained endurance
of some peril that encountered us:
not till we achieve in clear assurance
does it really get miraculous.

No presumption is there in assisting
this ineffable relatedness;
intimater grows the inter-twisting,
insufficient simple passiveness.

Stretch your practiced powers until their tension
spans the distance between two
contradictions ... For the god's intention
is to know himself in you.
                   Muzot, mid-February 1924
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Ibid., p. 299.



    7. And the words of the expressive utterance of the high-priests are these, that where there is a fear of every other thing it is more than the thing itself, but hell is a thing worse than the fear of it.
— from Dâdistân-i Dînîk (or) The Religious Opinions (of) Mânuskîhar, Son of Yudân-Yim, Dastur [high-priest] of Pârs and Kirmân, A.D. 881, Chapter XXVII; in Pahlavi Texts, Vol. II, E. W. West (tr.), Sacred Books of the East, F. Max Müller (gen. ed.), p. 58.