Poetry Blog No 160 Two Autumn Poems from the German of Rilke

TWO AUTUMN POEMS from the German of Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Mark Scrivener 

Rilke in Moscow painting L. Pasternak

Rainer Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926) was a Bohemian-Austrian writer and poet. His poetry is famous for its lyrical intensity, its "mystical" feeling and the struggle to find the spiritual and ineffable side of experience within the modern world. These qualities have made him popular in translation but also make capturing some of the subtle quality of his poems a challenge. These are two Rilke poems using the imagery of autumn as a metaphor.

Van Gogh Autumn Landscape

AUTUMN

After the German of Rainer Maria Rilke

The leaves now falling, fall as if from far,

As if far gardens faded in the heavens;

They fall with graceful gestures of denial.

And in the nights the heavy earth falls, while

In loneliness, so far from every star.

We all are falling. See, this hand falls there.

And look at other things: it is in all.

And yet there's One who holds this fall

In His soft hands' unending, gentle care.

Tiergarten, Vienna Austria.

AUTUMN DAY

after the German of Rainer Maria Rilke

Lord, it is time. The summer was so vast.

Lay now your shadows on the hours of sundials.

The winds let loose and on the fields be cast.

Command last fruits now to grow full and fine;

give them but two, south-heated days' last trace;

push them to final ripeness; hunt and chase

last sweetness down into the heavy vine.

Those now who have no home will build no more.

Those now alone will long stay so; will wake,

will read at length, will write long letters, take

to restless wandering, go to and fro,

in alleys when the leaves are driven so.

Poetry Blog No 123 Trees

                                       TREES

       This poem offers an imagination of a particular metaphysical point of view. It was originally inspired by a diagram from the English philosopher and doctor Robert Fludd.

         Robert Fludd, also known as Robertus de Fluctibus (17 January 1574 – 8 September 1637), was a prominent English Paracelsian physician. He is remembered as an astrologer, mathematician, cosmologist, Qabalist and Rosicrucian apologist. Fludd is best known for his compilations in occult philosophy. He had a celebrated exchange of views with Johannes Kepler concerning the scientific and hermetic approaches to knowledge. From Wikipedia

           The poem is not intended as a dogmatic interpretation of the venerable Kabbalistic diagram known as "The Tree of Life". Rather it is intended as a comment on the idea that perhaps the prevalent "reductionist" philosophy, namely that the "higher" comes from the "lower" (for example, that consciousness is a a result of physical reactions in the brain) may not represent the whole of reality. Throughout history, for instance, many have had an intuitive perception that the manifest comes from the unmanifest- that the world of the senses is an out-flowing of another realm. 

 

 Trees - Mark Scrivener

 Robert Fludd

Tree of Life - Robert Fludd

                                         TREES

The forest tree unfolds from earth,

and from the darkness has its birth;

and lifts its shimmering, green leaves

to rustle in the air's soft breeze,

and seeks with branching strength to rise

up towards the vastness of the skies:

the day-blue heaven and

the wide star-sky of night-

through living's power it stands

and seeks to rise up towards the light.

The tree of life unfolds from heaven

and from the Light descends to living;

and spreads the leaves of deeds upon

the earthly pathways of the sun;

and seeks fulfillment of its flourishing

within each aspect of the human journeying-

and has its roots forever in the Light...

there deep and deeply founded in

All-Being's timeless Might.