Free The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke by Rainer Maria Rilke Page A

the sound.
    He said to himself, they had to be behind him;
    said it aloud and heard it fade away.
    They had to be behind him, but their steps
    were ominously soft. If only he could
    turn around, just once (but looking back
    would ruin this entire work, so near
    completion), then he could not fail to see them,
    those other two, who followed him so softly:
    The god of speed and distant messages,
    a traveler’s hood above his shining eyes,
    his slender staff held out in front of him,
    and little wings fluttering at his ankles;
    and on his left arm, barely touching it:
she.
    A woman so loved that from one lyre there came
    more lament than from all lamenting women;
    that a whole world of lament arose, in which
    all nature reappeared: forest and valley,
    road and village, field and stream and animal;
    and that around this lament-world, even as
    around the other earth, a sun revolved
    and a silent star-filled heaven, a lament-
    heaven, with its own, disfigured stars—:
    So greatly was she loved.
    But now she walked beside the graceful god,
    her steps constricted by the trailing graveclothes,
    uncertain, gentle, and without impatience.
    She was deep within herself, like a woman heavy
    with child, and did not see the man in front
    or the path ascending steeply into life.
    Deep within herself. Being dead
    filled her beyond fulfillment. Like a fruit
    suffused with its own mystery and sweetness,
    she was filled with her vast death, which was so new,
    she could not understand that it had happened.
    She had come into a new virginity
    and was untouchable; her sex had closed
    like a young flower at nightfall, and her hands
    had grown so unused to marriage that the god’s
    infinitely gentle touch of guidance
    hurt her, like an undesired kiss.
    She was no longer that woman with blue eyes
    who once had echoed through the poet’s songs,
    no longer the wide couch’s scent and island,
    and that man’s property no longer.
    She was already loosened like long hair,
    poured out like fallen rain,
    shared like a limitless supply.
    She was already root.
    And when, abruptly,
    the god put out his hand to stop her, saying,
    with sorrow in his voice: He has turned around—,
    she could not understand, and softly answered
    Who?
                                            Far away,
    dark before the shining exit-gates,
    someone or other stood, whose features were
    unrecognizable. He stood and saw
    how, on the strip of road among the meadows,
    with a mournful look, the god of messages
    silently turned to follow the small figure
    already walking back along the path,
    her steps constricted by the trailing graveclothes,
    uncertain, gentle, and without impatience.
ALCESTIS
    Then all at once the messenger was there,
    amid the simmer of wedding guests: dropped in
    like the last ingredient into a bubbling pot.
    They kept on drinking and did not feel the stealthy
    entrance of the god, who held his aura
    as tight against his body as a wet cloak,
    and seemed to be like any one of them
    as he walked on. But abruptly, halfway through
    a sentence, one guest saw how the young master
    was startled from his couch at the table’s head,
    as though he had been snatched up into the air
    and mirroring, all over, with all his being,
    a strangeness that addressed him, horribly.
    And then, as though the mixture cleared, there was
    silence; on the bottom, just the dregs
    of muddy noise and a precipitate
    of falling babble, already giving off
    the rancid smell of laughter that has turned.
    For now they recognized the slender god,
    and, as he stood before them, filled with his message
    and unentreatable,—they almost knew.
    And yet, when it was uttered, it was beyond
    all understanding; none of them could grasp it.
    Admetus must die. When? Within the hour.
    But by this time he had broken through the shell
    of his terror; and he thrust out both his hands
    from the jagged holes, to bargain with the god.
    For years, for only one more year of