TitleNew Year’s

IAgitato

Happy New Year — light — land — shelter! My first letter to you in your new — A misunderstanding, this lush — (Lush-chewing) place, this sonorous place, this sounding place, Like Aeolus’ empty tower. My first letter to you from yesterday’s Homeland, where without you I shall pine away, A homeland now already one of The stars… The law of departure and retreat, By which the beloved becomes any other And the unprecedented becomes one among the never-to-be.

Shall I tell how I learned of you? Not an earthquake, not an avalanche. A person entered — anyone — beloved — You. — The saddest of events. — In News and Days*. Will you give us an article? — Where? — In the mountains. A window in fir branches. A bedsheet. — You do not see the papers, then? So, an article? — No. — But… — Please spare me. Aloud: difficult. Inwardly: I am no Christ-betrayer. — In the sanatorium. In a rented paradise. — The day? — Yesterday, the day before, I do not remember. Will you be at the Alcazar? — I will not. Aloud: family. Inwardly: anything but Judas. With the coming year! You were born tomorrow! —

IITempo di Marcia funebre

With the coming year! Shall I tell what I did when I learned of…? Hush… A slip of the tongue. From habit. Life and death I have long placed in quotation marks, Like knowingly empty weavings.

I did nothing, but something Was done, without shadow and without echo, Doing itself!

Now — how did you travel? How did it tear and not tear apart — The heart? Like on Orlov trotters, Eagles, you said, not falling behind, Did the breath catch — or even more? Sweeter? Neither heights nor descents For one who flew on true Russian eagles —

IIICorale

Who. We have blood ties with that world: Whoever has been in Russia has seen That world in this one. A well-arranged crossing! Life and death I pronounce with a hidden Smile — you will touch it with your own! Life and death I pronounce with a footnote, With an asterisk — the night for which I wait: Instead of a cerebral hemisphere — A starry one! …With the coming year!

Do not forget, my friend, The following: if Russian letters Have gone in place of German ones — It is not because, nowadays, they say, Anything will do, and a dead man, a beggar, will swallow all — Without blinking! — but because that world, Ours — I understood at thirteen, in Novodevichy — Is not without language, but all-language.

IVPrichet

And so I ask, not without sadness: You no longer ask how to say Nest in Russian? The only rhyme That covers all nests: stars.

Am I digressing? But no such thing Exists — to be distracted from you. Every thought, Du Lieber, Every syllable leads into you — whatever The subject may be, though German is dearer to me Than Russian, and angelic dearer than all! — as there is No place where you are not; there is no where-you-are-not: the grave. Everything is as it was not and everything as it was.

— Surely not even a little about me? — Your surroundings, Rainer, your condition? Urgently, without delay — Your first vision of the universe Meaning: of the poet in it, And your last — of the planet Given only to you, and given whole! Not the poet with dust, spirit with body To divide them is to insult both, But you with yourself, you with your very self, To be Zeus-like does not mean to be best — Castor — you with yourself — Pollux, Marble — you with yourself, with grass, Not separation and not meeting — a wager Face to face: both meeting and separation, The first.

VCanon

At your own hand How you looked — at the ink-stain trace upon it — From your so-many — how many? — mile-high, Infinite because beginningless Height above the crystalline level Of the Mediterranean — and other saucers. Everything as it was not and everything as it will be, And with me beyond the end of the suburb. Everything as it was not and everything as it already is.

— What is an extra week to one already written out! And where else should one look, Leaning on the rim of the box, From this one — if not to that one, from that same place If not to this much-suffering one. I live in Bellevue. From nests and branches A little town. Exchanging glances with the guide: Bellevue. A prison with a beautiful view Onto Paris — palace of a Gallic chimera — Onto Paris — and a little farther… Leaning on the scarlet rim, How amusing to you they must be, And to me must be, from a height without measure, Our Bellevues and Belvederes!

VIInterlude Misterioso

I leap across. Detail. Urgency.

VIITempo di Marcia funebre

The New Year is at the door. For what, with whom shall I clink Across the table? With what? Instead of foam — a wad Of cotton. Why? Well, it strikes — and what have I to do with it? What am I to do, in the New Year’s noise, With this inner rhyme: Rainer — died. If you, such an eye, have darkened, Then life is not life, and death is not death. Then — it grows dim, I shall understand fully when we meet! — There is neither life nor death, but a third thing, New. And for it — having strewn with straw The seventh for the departing twenty-sixth — What happiness to end with you, to begin with you! Across the table, immeasurable to the eye, I shall clink with you in a quiet clink Of glass against glass? No — not in their tavern way: I against You, merging, giving the rhyme: Third.

Across the table I look at your cross. How many places — suburban, and space Beyond the city! And to whom does the bush wave If not to us? Places — precisely ours And no one else’s! All leaf! All pine-needle! Your places with me, yours with yourself. What with you, even in a crowd, Could one speak of? Places! And months! And weeks of rainy suburbs Without people! And mornings! And all together, Not yet begun by nightingales!

VIIIAdagio

Surely I see badly, being in the pit; Surely you see better, being above: Nothing came of us two. So purely, so simply Nothing, so fitting to our shoulders And stature, that there is no need to list it.

Nothing, except — do not expect anything Out of the ordinary, out of step The one who steps out of rhythm is wrong! — And into what row, how, Could one have entered? The eternal refrain: Nothing, even something into something, Anything — even from afar — even the shadow Of a shadow! Nothing, that: that hour, that day, That house — even to a condemned man in chains Granted by memory: that mouth! Or were we too fastidious in means? Of all that, only that world Was ours, as we ourselves are only the reflection Of ourselves — in exchange for all this — all that world!

From the least built-up of outskirts — With a new place, Rainer, a new world, Rainer! From the furthest cape of provability — With a new eye, Rainer, a new hearing, Rainer!

Everything was a hindrance To you: passion and friend. With a new sound, Echo! With a new echo, Sound!

How many times on a school stool: What mountains are there? What rivers? Are landscapes beautiful without tourists? Was I not mistaken, Rainer — paradise is mountainous, Storm-filled?

There is not only one paradise; above it surely Another paradise? Terraced? Judging by the Tatras — Paradise cannot but be An amphitheater. And over someone the curtain has fallen… Was I not mistaken, Rainer: God is a growing Baobab? Not a Golden Louis — There is not only one God? Above him surely another God?

How does one write in the new place? Yet if you are there — there is poetry: you yourself are Poetry! How does one write in the good life Without a table for the elbow, without a forehead for the hand The handful?

— A little message, in the familiar cipher! Rainer, are you rejoicing in new rhymes?…

For understand correctly the word Rhyme — what is it, if not a whole series of new Rhymes — death? Nowhere to go: the language is mastered. A whole series of meanings and consonances, New ones.

— Farewell! Until acquaintance! We shall see each other — I do not know — but we shall sing together. With a land unknown to my own self — With a whole sea, Rainer, with a whole me!

IXTempo I

So as not to pass each other — write beforehand. With a new sound-inscription, Rainer! In heaven there is a ladder, along it with Gifts… With a new laying-on of hands, Rainer!

— So they do not flood, I hold them with my palm. — Above the Rhône and above Rarogne, Above obvious and complete separation, Into Rainer — Maria — Rilke’s hands.

XPostlude

Bellevue. 7 February 1927.