His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tense, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.
(trans. from German by Stephen Mitchell)
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4 comments:
You have a gr8 blog snaars, keep it up.
hi snaars. mayfly here. just wanted to stop in and say i'm a big fan of rilke. so much so that i translated one of his works for a literary journal. seriously though. check it out. *trying hard to keep a straight face*
How ironic, that Babelfish should be responsible for the fourth worst poetry in the universe (after Vogon poetry, of course).
This is great: Everything as was not and everything as it will be
And with me after the end of the suburb.
and
Correctly badly I see, since in the pit,
It is correct, better you see, since it is more than:
Nothing with you it left.
and
How often on the school stool:
What for the mountains there? What rivers?
What other literary gems await discovery? It's easy with babelfish! Thanks, mayfly. That was fun.
My favorite was Baudelaire. Or rather, I should say, Baudelaire, The Travesty Of.
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