TEN CHANTS OF LOVE AND DESPAIR
Raquel Angel-Nagler
REMEMBERING RAINER MARIA RILKE
DUINO ELEGIES *** Young man, You began a moment before everything began Who you were in the water of the womb, Ancient wells, memorized blood, fathers, mothers, Like a deserted village, fallen trees. Young man, whose cries scalded your silence before you were born. Young man, Your love wasn't a turbulent flower, It was endless like a moment, like time. You loved before you began, The night in the womb, hollowed by solitude, There was a secret opening, the pure depth. Who walked inside you, Like a storm, like a quiet breeze, even before you walked. Who touched you further than what you could resist, What men lost in time woke up in your sleep. Young man, how did you love? Young man, You were everywhere, in your solitude, in what you remembered, in what you forgot. You are tangled, your motions go nowhere. Mother, Where is the time when your gaze arched upon me, Was enough to know who I am, When the long fingers of softness were molten in your gaze, When you taught me how to forgive the pain, When you gazes, quiet, as if you knew How to begin, each time from the beginning, As if you knew when the solitude, the silence, Will be bigger than what I am Young man Your sleep felt protected, but sleep is never safe, The eye inside was open, What did you see, which flood that began before you were born, What did you remember, What dreams taught ancient pattern, What dream did you thirst dream, how did it know you were thirsty, How did you go always deeper, your veins open like pain. Young man, There were people in your silence, there were people in each motion of your stillness. Good men, flawed, whole, broken, Who was the ancient well, the pure depth, Whose arms wrapped you, Gently, so gentle So that you wouldn't be lost in yourself, Who guarded the moment before dawn, the moment before hope? Young man, Who guarded your absence, miles of nothing, Whose touch went far, further than yourself, Who walked inside you, who lead you to yourself, Who let you untangle yourself When the web of thought choked you. Young man, Who was alive inside you the moment before you were born, Young man, Where was your Ithaca, the moment before you were born. *** Every volcano is a burning beast, And yet we sing the sparking horns, the dirt of depth, And they sing us. We live where it's dangerous: the fire fear, The burning beast that makes life possible. The fire where everything began sings us. Where are the days when volcanoes were out of your door, Beautiful, bright, dangerous, killers. Who are you, why do you stand out of the door. Standing out of the door is an act of faith. Why do you scatter your gaze in the morning air, The light: a glass of water, an urn, a hand full of pollen. What are you going to do with the light, To sow, to mourn, to be a hand that gives water, And maybe you'll be everything at the same time The way life does. And suddenly: the shadows, They gather all the suns above them, invisible, turbulent, They bring the secret light back to your face, You see your face, You see people, the light leaks in the cracks of shadows in each motion. The shadows are for everybody. The light is for everybody. You evaporate, you breathe yourself out. Does the world taste you? Do people taste you? It is strange, The more you evaporate the more you exist. You die from inside out, Features melt inside you: Your past, the face of people, the world. Your breath, where does it go, It feels like a secret wave flowing to other breaths, The shores are flowing like air, like water. The features mix inside you Like the vague motion of a pregnant woman bowing to the womb, As if returning to the womb. Do you see the face in the womb, The face white with milk, red with scalding life on the neck At the same time. You feel that all things are in conversation with you, You feel the tree, the well, the house are real. You don't know how real you are When you build a house, when you plant a tree, How real you are when you love Even when the absence rises like a tide. Its fall is real. *** Lovers, You who hold each other, your hands melt skin to skin, Do you see beneath your touch the clear duration, Do you feel your hands are conscious, That the cracks between your hands are conscious? Do you feel your hands are real, the cracks are real? Do you feel love is real, is it the sea you hear somewhere deep, The shining salt. Lovers, Whatever you touch is real, it exists, Life doesn't like phantoms. Lover, No one can love and remain the same, No one can cross the night and remain the same. Lover, do you have the courage to cry for the sea, Do you withdraw before the cry begins? Slowly, your feelings outgrow you, like a huge icon, And you don't know who will guard them. Which past, which twilight, which cracks of light. You don't know who will make the icon love, feel, from the beginning. *** My beloved, You are a child, the fear of the dark, the ancient beast. My beloved, there is a river inside you, floating glass, it sees you, you are vulnerable, You fear the floating glass. My beloved, The fear of light blinds you. You don't know that vulnerable is power, the gift of your small breath, You don't know that power can be pain. My beloved, Life may be generous, It may give you the biggest gift: To be who you are. My beloved, Who are you when no one sees you. My beloved, In the biggest theatre of the world: life, You act life, the blind motions, each day from the beginning. My beloved, Why the acting, Why the fear of seeing, the fear of living, the fear of dying. My beloved, Who finds you beneath the act, Which empty benches see you when you cry, which applause. *** My beloved, Why don't we fear the tomorrow, Why the loss of the past is a bigger pain, Why do we run further than ourselves, even when we run towards ourselves, Why loving is so hard, Why do we have to choose it, each day from the beginning, Why the wind bends incessantly at your head dilute your shape, Why do you flow like a river that keeps the sky, that keeps your face. My beloved, You live so deep in yourself, a root, Who hears your silence. My beloved, The days flow, indifferent as a multiplication table. Everything is a repetition, The repetitions that makes us the same, The repetitions that make the same different, We are what repeats again and again, An artist that repeats the motions, the shapes, Fear repeats itself inside us, And love, even love is a repetition, the seasons of love turn, turn, They rain without umbrella. Our mind invents colors, Each thought is a color, each color is a thought. Our mind invents us: Jacob, one foot on the sky ladder, On foot in fire. It invents what we are. *** My beloved, Everything is a memory that didn't happen yet, An ancient gene. They make you old before you were a child, The wound is always deeper, It kills your unlived life. My beloved. Your eyes: a window of hurt, The smell, your face in the window you don't understand, May say your name, the glass: a cage, the glass permeable. My beloved, Your eye out closed, Your eye in open. Whom do you see when no one sees you, Whose is the face that brought you home. My beloved, It's night. You wander far from yourself, How do you create the distances, Whose cry melts on a wall, who dilutes your cry. It's windy, the wind beats like rain. My beloved, You are too fragile for such a night, Woman, no one can cross his night and remain the same. My beloved, In the room, everything is as usual, The fish in the aquarium, Your gaze crumbles at the dam of your eye lashes, At the dam of glass, And you don't understand why the fish doesn't know what water is, You don't if fish cry, You don't know where are the glass eyes, in which mural, in which sadness. *** Oh, promised land, Where is your summer, The sun stayed inside you, There is no longer sun for us. Promised land, We used to blossom and whither at the same time, We never really felt nature was enough, And we don't know who lives our lives. Promised land, Who are we, We don't know the height of sadness, We don't know who created it. There are departures all the time, It is enough to feel people are real, It is enough to stay even if there is no woman, no child, no sky, It is enough to sooth the parting. Mother, the liquid womb, Your love, your fear float in this water, Your fear id inside me, even when the womb is dead. Mother, Did you love me even before I began, I who loved you, But you stay there, silent in the womb, The distances are always bigger, the separations are always bigger. Mother, To contain the whole death in a little body Has no language, it doesn't cry. There will be new seasons in the world. We create whatever is in our mind, And at times we meet, the picture is the same. Sometimes people see their thirst, and the thirst sees them, Sometimes people see their thirst in the thirst of others, Sometimes people break the stone eyes, the precious colors- dust, Together, again, together. Oh, hours of childhood The place where everything was possible, Shape existed and didn't exist, There were no bridges to measure the distance of the solitude of a child. We tried to grow up sooner, To give shape to everything, to give it the permanence it needed so much. We stood in the gap between shape and shape, We chose shapes, like life, We chose like earth stillness, stillness is power. We c didn't choose good answers, we chose better questions. It is time to give back the fear, the thirst, It is time to take back our life. It is time to take our clarities back, the pure depth. *** These men, who are they? Circus people, vagabond as feeling, thirsty as curse, How they became from the first moment, Twisted, bending, tossed, leaping as if they came from oily air. They fall like heavy rain, they wound the earth, They fall again and again, With each leaf they are closer to their pain, closer to their rage. The old man, shrunk in his suit, a shroud. A bliss. There are mothers who were harsh, They die standing, they cannot be folded. Who are these people? Why do they rope-walk without a safety net, a net of mercy, Why the fat woman is folded in a cast, Look how gently, so gently, their hunger walks, how quiet the thirst, Man, look where the rage begins, Look, in the center of everything Petals fall, pollen fertilizing the fruit of sadness, And you woman of a hundred petals, You are each time different, There is time in your veins, You don't know if beneath the petals your shoulders are naked, And it doesn't matter. Where is this place? Where did you, leaping woman, flying man Fall, died. Where is the place where gravity is still heavy, Where is the place where your somersaults met, Where the restlessness of life was still, Where is the place where the man and the woman Leap, deeper, always more together, Where is the place where the crowd, Hundred men, simple, silent, Could see their thirst, their effort, the twisted body of their leaping, Where they could be a hand that gives water, Where they could hear the screams in their silence, Where the light was melting on the walls. *** Fig tree, Your last blossom was the first. You pressed into the thighs of a woman, your difficult fruit. Fig tree, It is too late to blossom, We are all betrayed by our blossom, Time pours into you like a spring of tired water. Only a few, heroes, their will to bloom is bigger than their fear, The man who is closer to death, whose life is a spark, His whole life, the distance between fear and the beauty of a motion. Time, the big gardener, lets the fruit remain the gap. Who will find him in this gap. I sing to him, the body a bridge of sound, a bridge of cracked longing. Mother, Didn't his longing began inside you? No new born longed like that. Mother, He broke the temple when he broke your womb. How many temples should a man break in order to be who he is. Mother of heroes, Your womb was simple, prepared for the usual miracle, You were not ready for a hero, A man standing at the edge of his silence, A man struggles to conquer himself. Mother of heroes, You are the only one who doesn't know Heroes are so silent, so invisible, You are the only one Who can find the hero where no one expects him, In a simple man Whose will to live is as big as his fear, His will to love, as big as his fear, In a simple man of simple hours, The cracked fingers where the touch leaks. Mother of heroes, Nothing is really simple, There is nothing simple in the hours, There is nothing simple in a touch. *** You woo no one, you've aged, And yet you can cry, The way someone cries for something that is too late. Man, Who will hear your cry among the angels. Man, the air will carry your cry, The cry can toss you into an invisible space, Cries see, like pain. You may find someone who was silent for too long, Someone who waits for the cry to find him. Your cry doesn't need to float high, we are law land prople, The height of a human is enough. Man, what can the angels do with a human cry, You need men to grasp the cry, the way a fountain grasps the water, What can the angels do with the water? You need not only the hours where the light melts, You need not only the clear tears of a storm, Man, you need also the night, The night that lowers itself to touch you, To feel the pulse of the most distant star, To see in the dark, to see the dark in the dark, They say the dead come out of the graves at night, But what can you do with the dead, Who will sooth them, who will sooth the death inside you. Man, you need a moment in time between two invisibles, You need the now where everything exists, everything is rea. Man, what can the angels do in such space? Man, you need to know the huge silos of power: the bread of a human. Man, you need to know How every turn of earth Brings so many refugees in themselves, The only continent left, How many nowhere children. What can the angels do among the nowhere children Man, two eyes are not enough for all the clarities, And yet, you see. Man, you should feel, somewhere deep, The thousand years of feelings, they climb slow, mud in their feet, Towards you. There are no angels in their feet. Man, what for do you need the angels? How many thoughts does a man breath, How many limits should a man defend, when breath is not enough. How many thought does he need In order to guard the child that came from so far, Man, the child that comes towards you, a drop of rain on a leaf falling, falling, The tiny feet in your shoes, Man, , there are no angels in the fall, What for do you need the angels? *** Our eyes, closed out, open in. We look at the open air, but nothing opens in the eye out. How can we be free when the world remains out. When the eye in is open, What do we see, why do we see always death melting on our walls, Why do we think too much, remember too much, Why there is no never the raw space where old jewels smolder, grow. Children are different, little animals, Their eyes, bigger than their face, Bigger that their life, There is no death walking in their eyes, They look through you, Maybe they see the only time they know: the now, Maybe the now sees them, Maybe we love with the eyes of a child, now. Maybe it makes the child more infinite, a round wholeness, The way only the now can. We grow old, We are so close to death, too close to see it, We don't know where is the infinite moment, We don't know which is the last question. At times we remember the eye of the child, open out, open in. We may see directions, we may find beauty, Maybe we are closer to ourselves, curious in a tender way. Maybe we need no bridge to measure how far we are, how alone. Maybe the only distance was always the infinite: The minute space between a touch and the skin. Everything is a second home, The first home: the womb, is lost forever, We are refugees in ourselves. We live bewildered, we don't know our address Our motions were always of someone who parts, We feel that all that we'll leave is a half read book on our bed. But there are people, good people, who know how to see: So many refugees, each in the life of the other. They look: Their motions coming and going, a tide, Between what is obvious, and a memory that didn't happen yet. They look: They see people in the journey from station zero. They look: They are in the station and on the train, The pure direction: the now The raw distances crashing, crashing, The memory that didn't happen yet Travels without a ticket, Smuggler of distances, smuggler of dreams. *** We came from very far, We didn't bring treasure, a handful of sand, But we brought words, small words ,say-able, We created they words, and they created us, The name of what we feel, what we want, who we were, We can feel more when the feeling has a name. Why did we cling to the journey, why did we feel it is the way home Why didn't we try wings, Why did we choose always the most difficult way, Why do we believe that whatever we did here, Fingers spilling red in our hands, Fingers depressing our touch, deep in our body, deep in earth, Why did we believe that's how the infinite looks. Why wings were not enough, why the journey had to be slow, Why did we come running on cut feet, How many hands do we need to be human, how many deaths. Why everything is disappearing, Why do we invent things, why do we invent ourselves, each day from the beginning, Maybe in order to disappear less, to forget less. There is a threshold, a slow threshold, We die from inside out , little by little, And then, all at once, And there is no one to put a new threshold. What can we take with us beyond the threshold Except the picture of the world that we invented, Except the patience, the experience of effort, What can we do except praising life, the love beneath pain, The things we made praise us, We praise the effort that brought us home, We praise the fields in our hands, silos of power. You live, you love, not in what is no longer visible, Or in what is not visible yet, You live in the slender clear space between the two, And everything is hard work, Living, loving, the journey, the way home, And the slender space where everything begins and ends. *** One day, My face,, beyond effort, beyond patience, Will stream with others, The stream growing bigger, deeper. I didn't know how you, brother, Could carry in the waves so many mirrored eyes, How your motion Coming from the era of fish, Will weave into my feelings, the exquisite web. There is no limit to the fear of closeness, There is no fear to the fear of being alone. I didn't know the alleys of the city Where everything is close, the pause between the skin and a touch, Where everything is real. Children playing, so serious, so deep in the play, Where lovers do what lovers usually do, as simple as magic, I didn't know how raw they were, I didn't know the silence beneath a cry, I didn't know where to buy second hand hope, the hunger was always first hand. I didn't know The circus in the middle of my life: Booths of chance, Booths where I am an arrow, the target. I didn't know how many could be nomad in life, It makes you strong, It makes you bankrupt, the money is paper. I didn't know the strange ancient man Walking among the gold mines, The bent neck of solitude, The hands of patience, the ten fingers that hear, Clear, secret. I don't know if my children will follow the man To the big gold, the gold in the veins of pain, If they'll eat the gold, if the gold will eat them, Slow, precise. I don't know if he tries to weigh me In the scales of planets, planets of gold, I never understood How the scale of human is enough. I don't know how many went on To the journey to human. A thousand years of feelings, A thousand years of hands: the fear, the sowing, A thousand years of seeds. I don't know how far I can go, I don't know what far is, what close is, When the eyes of a child, bigger than his life, weave into my eyes, When an echo from a street as close as the night, began in the other side of the world. *** My beloved, Your face came from very far, clay, the cracks are beautiful. Your face is too light, as if gravity didn't exist. I see you at the table, Nothing is taller than the question you were not aloud to ask, Nothing is deeper than a simple door, we live and die on both sides of the door. Stand by the door, call, I'll come. Some days the rain comes, It makes everything bend in the same direction, Like an exquisite dance, like the dance of pain. My beloved, Nature is the only god, The seasons, the immense autumn, we shed our skin, Everything bows to nature, even the soul, The soul is inside us, it is matter, So everything bows to itself. My beloved, Bow with all your bodies, Like a tribe returning home. Night, the path of black stones, Everything is stone, the light, the shadows, Each step is a quarry of stone. You don't know why the marble an be so deep, so clear Why do you see your face in the depth Playing hide and seek, How do you find yourself, how you lose it, How you find it in each quarry. Stones feel. The moon, the stone path, The light doesn't make you heavier, The silence doesn't make you heavier. Your shoes are more ancient than the child, His feet enter, with each step, your shoes, They sigh in each step, the sigh is heavy, heavier than a child. There are thousand years of lost children, A thousand years inside us. We are not a smile. My beloved, Do you know where to find yourself, In which stone, in which child in which shoe, Do you know how to find yourself, each stone, each child, each shoe, From the beginning. I'll wait for you ,my tribe returning home. *** You don't know the fragments that you are, Whose eyes, whose hands, whose words, Whose time. You don't know how many people you can contain, How much past, memories that believe they are your own, That they are you. You don't know how many things repeat themselves in you, How everything is a repetition, the habit of living, of loving. The horizon is stuck, Blue up and down, The blue is beautiful. You sit, unbendable as time. It is so easy to understand When you are alone, When there is no god to tell you what to know, No god to tell you how to live, how to die. He learned how to live from the waves, tangling, untangling, The sea birds, the peaks of air, knew where to go. He learned from the rivers, Rivers know always the way to the sea, The place where river lose their name, Where they flow dark, clear, beneath everything. He was awake, a sea bird, a river, He was a man. He knew why life is a journey worthwhile to take, to love. He survived all the arrivals. *** The journey walks always alone. If I cry out, who will cry with me, Maybe only the ones I cried for, And if the cry will be too close, An image of who I am, How could I call, so vulnerable, so visible. I stand on the rocks along the way, The sea is too beautiful, I cry the way one cries in front of a sudden mirror. My face in the mirror, the beauty, the pain. I look at the mirror, it can break me. Mirrors are a lonely place, no one to hear my cry. The cry chokes me, The dark floats towards myself, the wingless sob. Who will hear me. Slowly I turn towards myself, To the habits of the eyes, of the motions, of the whispers. Home. Then, the night, The void, mother of stars, The void steals your eyes, There are not eyes enough for the void. It is easier when you are alone, When you can conceal your voice beneath you silence: Who you are, why you are. No one is more blind than the one who doesn't want to see. It is easier when you are alone. You can throw your cry into the window, high, far, Let you veins pulsate with the most distant star, Let the sky melt in the ancient sea where you began. But if you cry, who will cry with me. The seasons begin everywhere, Inside you, in the endless fields, The past walks towards you, full of future. A name in an open window, Maybe there is a face behind the name, But now it is faceless, You are alone. You waited always for something, For love, for the angels. You didn't survive the waiting. Man, if you cry which angel will hear you, Which angel will cry for you, Man, which angel survived the waiting. *** You feel when death is here, The end of thirst, the end of an eternity, All the ages of a man in one moment. The only eternity you know is the world, time, beauty, Caravans of people coming, coming. But we, the living, we need the thirst, We need the clear spring of sadness, of effort, Water gushing, gushing. They say music began in the midst of mourning, Or a lullaby for a child. I don't know how can the music make me feel more the pain, Feel the sadness that makes me human, How the lullaby of a child forgives me. *** You know how to fall in love, But do you know how to stay in love. Do you love the sudden storm, to own the wilderness, More than the slow glitter of rain in your thirst. You have to begin each day from the beginning, The effort, the gratitude, the love of men, You havve to be born, each day from the beginning, The last death is always the first, But earth takes your rebirth back, As if the power to be born is exhausted, And yet, mothers bear their child, each day from the beginning. Love is always free and bound. Is it time to detach yourself, To endure yourself alone, There is no way to go except yourself: the land of depth and peaks. Voices, voices, angelic, But I don't know how to listen the way angels do, The orbit of angels is too distant, too tall, taller than our voice, I hear the way men can hear, with the sum of his mind and his effort. I need to hear men in order to find where to go, I llisten, my past, my future, a caravan of voices, That's how complete I listen. I never waited for the voice of god, I gather voices out of the silence: Those who died from the effort, Those who for the love of life, from the pain of living. I must breath into my life, To let it grow, like a child, each day more., each day better, To know life is the best thing I'll ever have, The pure movement of existence. It is strange to let go, To abandon habits, purposes that walk nowhere, To let go of the fear of living, the fear of dying, the fear of longing. It is strange to see things that seem floating in all directions, To see how they belong, how they entwine, Like a hand that has found its fingers. To lie down, to be in open conversation with the rain. ***
