Rainer Maria Rilke
,REQUIEM FOR THE DEATH OF A BOY
Translation
by
Randall Jarrell
Why did I print upon myself the names
Of Elephant and Dog and Cow
So far off now, already so long ago,
And Zebra, too ... what for, what for?
Who holds me now
Climbs like a watermark
Above all that. What help is it to know
One was, if one could never press
Through what's soft, what's hard, and come at last
Behind them, to the face that comprehends?
And these beginning hands-
Sometimes you'd say: He promises.
I promised, yes- but what I promised
you
Was never what I felt afraid of.
Sometimes I'd sit against the house for hours
And look up at a bird.
If
only I could have turned into the looking!
It lifted me, it flew me, how my eyes
Were open up there then! But I loved no one.
Loving was anxiousness,- don't you see, I wasn't we,
And I was so much bigger than a man,
I
was what I was afraid of, I was my own danger,
And, inside it, I was the seed.
A little seed. The street can have it,
The wind can have it. I give it away.
For that we all sat there so together
