The First Elegy
from The Duino Elegies
Translated by Jo Davis
Well who, if I screamed, would hear me from among the angel
hierarchies? and even supposing one of them suddenly
drew me to his heart: I would dissipate in his
stronger existence. For beauty is nothing
but the start of the terrible, which we can only just bear,
and we wonder at it so because it coolly disdains
to destroy us. Every angel is terrible.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the dark distress call
of my sobbing. Ah, then who is there
when in need? Not angels, not humans,
and the resourceful animals already notice
that we are not really at home
in the interpreted world. What remains for us is
some tree on a hillslope so that we would see it
again each day; what remains for us is yesterday's street
and the twisted loyalty of a habit
that took to us and so remained and never left.
Oh and the night, the night, when the wind, full of the stars and blackness of space,
eats away at our faces – for whom would it not remain, the longed-for,
gently disillusioning thing, which impends exhaustingly
on the single heart. Is it easier on lovers?
Ah, they just use each other to screen themselves from their lot.
Do you still not know? Throw the emptiness out of your arms
to the spaces that we breathe; so that perhaps the birds
will feel the extra air with more fervent flight.
Yes, the springtimes needed you, to be sure. Many stars
unfairly expected that you would feel them. There rose
a wave to you out of the past, or
because you came over to an open window,
a violin gave itself to you. All that was mission.
But could you manage it? Weren’t you still
distracted by anticipation as if everything
heralded the coming of a beloved? (Where will you shelter her
since, with you, the huge strange thoughts go in and out
and often remain all night.)
But if you ache for it, then sing women who love;
their renowned passion is still not nearly undying enough.
Those – you almost begrudge them – abandoned ones, that you
found so much more loving than the gratified. Begin
from scratch, forever, the paean that always falls short;
think: the hero goes on, the downfall itself was
just a pretext to exist: the last birth.
But spent, nature takes those women and their love
back into herself, as if there wasn’t the strength
to achieve this twice. Have you, then, thought enough
of Gaspara Stampa, that any girl whose lover
stole away, might feel, seeing the soaring example
of this woman in love: I could be like her?
Shouldn’t these oldest pains
grow more fruitful for us at last? Is it not time that we, loving,
free ourselves from the beloved and, trembling, endure it:
as the arrow endures the bowstring – in order, concentrated in the leap away,
to be more than itself. For remaining is nowhere.
Voices, voices. Hear, my heart, as before only
saints heard: so hard that the gigantic call
lifted them from the ground; but they continued kneeling,
impossibly, and paid it no attention:
So hard were they listening. Not that you could bear
God's voice, not by far. But listen to the blowing wind,
the message that forms out of stillness.
It whispers now from those who died young to you.
Wherever you entered a church in Rome and Naples,
didn't their fate calmly address you?
Or an inscription boldly charged you with a mission,
like the tablet in Santa Maria Formosa did the other day.
What do they want of me? I should gently brush off
the appearance of injustice that sometimes hinders
the clear travel of their spirits.
To be sure, it is rare no longer to inhabit the world,
to barely practise learnt customs,
not to give roses and other especially promising things
the meaning of the future of humanity;
not to be that, which one was in endlessly anxious hands,
anymore, and even to discard one’s own name like a snapped toy.
Rare, no longer to wish wishes. Rare, to see everything that was coherent
fluttering so loosely in space. And being dead is exhausting
and full of making amends so that by degrees one feels a little of eternity.
But the living make all the mistakes, which they discern too keenly.
Angels (they say) often don’t know whether they count as
living or dead. The eternal current drags all ages with it
through both realms and drowns them in both.
Finally, they need us no more, those taken early.
One weans oneself gently from the earthly, as one weaned
from the mild breast of the mother. But we, who need
such great mysteries, for whom so often spiritual advancement
springs from sadness — could we exist without them?
Is the legend for nothing – that in the lament for Linos,
music first dared to penetrate the parched numbness,
so that in the terrified space, which an almost godlike youth
suddenly stepped away from forever, the emptiness got into each
vibration, which now transports us, and comforts, and helps.
Jo Davis is a writer living in London. Her poetry has appeared in publications such as PN Review, Strix, the Mays Anthology and with Bad Betty Press. She won the Disability in Poetry competition. Her epic poem, The Patchwork Epic of Waltham Forest, was commissioned by the local council and picked up by Waterstones. She was a judge and editor for the Mays 10 and for Poets at the Mill. She has a PhD in Musicology from the University of Cambridge, where she won the William Berkeley Squire Prize and also ran Darwin College Poetry Society. Her London-based writers group, Coppermill Poets, received local government funding for its community projects. Her creative writing programme, Lick the Pencil, won an UnLtd Award for its work with disabled and disadvantaged children. She also worked as a checker for The Guardian's star crossword compiler, Araucaria (John Graham). She has been invited to perform at various poetry nights including most recently Nicki Heinen's Words and Jazz.
