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 159 This Night on our Domestic Screen

THIS NIGHT ON OUR DOMESTIC SCREEN

 

In many respects the human capacity for complex thought is a wonderful faculty that enables us to make sense of our experiences of the universe. However, it can also lead to a certain blindness, especially when ideas that are convenient in certain respects are taken as some sort of reality.

For instance, maps of all sorts are convenient but many of the things on maps like the lines for borders between countries don't actually exit except in people's minds. Politics and economics are two areas where ideas are often mistaken for reality and truth is a rare commodity. 

 

THIS NIGHT ON OUR DOMESTIC SCREEN

This night on our domestic screen

a simulacrum of a man

sheds withered, drifting words upon

politic policy. They seem

like drying leaves on desert wind.

For years I have been exiled from

prosperity or even pay.

And faith grows thin.

I step outside. The air

is clear and cool in summer darkness.

Here, far from urban glare,

galactic opalescence sheens

the scattered silver of the stars.

Our minds make maps. See over there

are five, bright stars... how hard it is to see

those five, bright suns and not the mental bars

we call the southern cross.

The constellations have real stars but not

the arbitrary lines of mind's convenient gestalt.

And nations have real people not

percentages and abstract, common aims.

Dry words from dry souls hungering for fame

these are

less real than lines from star to star.

Poetry Blog No 158 To a Liquid Amber Tree

TO A LIQUID AMBER TREE

This poem is somewhat in the form of an ode as used by the English Romantics. That is to say it is in a regular stanza form and starts with a specific object or set of images and evolves from them to a more general feeling-filled philosophic tone.

Each line is an Iambic pentameter- 5 times unstressed, stressed syllables (Through summer rain and sun your season's worth), that is the same as Shakespeare's Sonnets and plays and the odes of Keats. There are 10 lines in each stanza with a rhyming scheme ABAB CDCD EE. This means that as well as the overall arc of the development and meaning of the poem there is also a smaller development in each stanza. The first four lines introduce some meanings and images, the next four develop them and the final last two rhyming lines come to a sort of "conclusion".

The subject of the poem could be called in a general way "time", especially as it lives in human experience.
PS The Liquid Amber Tree is also known as American Sweetgum.

TO A LIQUID AMBER TREE

Through summer rain and sun your season's worth

Was in the flourishing of green life, bringing

Leaf-mantle's shade, rich on the morning earth,

Wide-fingered branches sheltering the singing,

Light-winged inhabitants of air. But since

Eternal time soft-turns till autumn's caught

The dawning sun in misty breath that hints

At grey-eyed winter's sharp and frosty thought

You have transformed your sun-born plenitude

To constellations of wild stars, flame-hued.

As golden as a harvest moon arising

Through eastern night's autumnal, misty skies,

As yellow as a candle flame aspiring

To cheer with single light night-wintered eyes,

As red as soon-descending solar face

Farewelling day through scattered westward cloud,

Are these your leaves, still hanging in their place,

But changing to a multi-coloured crowd.

Like youthful memories made jewels by years,

Soon shed as silently as secret tears.

Such is the raiment of the days, once green

With expectations of arising powers:

A prospect of accomplishment that's seen

To fade to golden failings with the hours

That flee in multitudes as fleeting days

And pass too swiftly through the flying years.

Forever to the future passing, plays

Hard time's relentless march, and in our ears

All that once was of hope and purposed reason

Is melody now lost in fading's season.

The gold-red leaves are shed and flutter down,

Lie brittle now before the winter's birth;

And from remembered glory die to brown,

And vanish in the all-absorbing earth.

Bare branches are a skeleton of tree,

The seeming death of life's green flame, imploring

Repeal of winter's temporal decree,

And trembling in the freezing wind's rough warring.

And in the season of the early frost

The memory of bursting life seems lost.

But deep is life and time has phoenix wings,

And every dying is a being born,

And all that's lost is secret gain and brings,

Like night, a never-lived-before, new dawn.

So winters bring new buds of spring, allow

The sole bird of the fire-death to soar,

Declaring life in ever-fuller power,

Its new-born glory greater than before...

And thus in time time's endless purpose shows;

And thus in time time's tree forever grows.

Poetry Blog No 157 Five Autumn Haiku

FIVE AUTUMN HAIKU (Northern NSW Australia Southern Hemisphere)

Some notes on local images-

Eucalypts- Eucalyptus trees, in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae, are commonly known in Australia as gum trees. There are over 700 species in Australia.

Farmer's Friend -Bidens pilosa is a species of flowering plant in the aster family. It is native to the Americas but it is known widely as an introduced species of other regions, including Eurasia, Africa, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. It is a tall branched weed with thin yellow flowers that develop into a cluster of barbed seeds. - From Wikipedia. It gets its ironic common name from the annoying habit of covering your trousers with its barbed seeds.

Magpie - This is the Australian magpie. The Australian magpie (Cracticus tibicen) is a medium-sized black and white passerine bird native to Australia and southern New Guinea. Described as one of Australia's most accomplished songbirds, the Australian magpie has an array of complex vocalisations. It is omnivorous, with the bulk of its varied diet made up of invertebrates

from Wikipedia.

Moon - There is (as it were ) a southern hemisphere "moon". From Google search- The Moon orbits near the equator of the Earth. People in different hemispheres see the moon in a slightly different way. In the Southern Hemisphere, people see the moon 'upside down' so the side which is shining (sunlit) seems the opposite from the Northern Hemisphere.

FIVE AUTUMN HAIKU

(Northern NSW Australia Southern Hemisphere)

one

High bright clusters on

Eucalypts. Leaves green-gold

On May blue vastness.

two

"Farmer's Friend." Weed's white

Five petals in autumn flower.

Unwanted beauty.

three

Black and white, well-dressed

Investigator of mown ground.

Magpie on the grass.

four

Bamboo leaves tremble,

Shimmering in May sun and

Soft breath of far blue.

five

Pale half moon in warm

Autumn afternoon. Later

Brighter in cold night.

Mark Scrivener Poetry Blog No 156 Five Summer Haiku

FIVE SUMMER HAIKU

"A haiku in English is a very short poem in the English language, following to a greater or lesser extent the form and style of the Japanese haiku. A typical haiku is a three-line observation about a fleeting moment involving nature...a three-line format with 17 syllables arranged in a 5–7–5 pattern or about 10 to 14 syllables, which more nearly approximates the duration of a Japanese haiku with the second line usually the longest." From Wikipedia

In addition, capturing this moment in few words discourages the use of abstract or vague language, particularly as the haiku was not intended to be the expression of a merely abstract or philosophic "truth." These five haiku were moments from the summer season.

FIVE SUMMER HAIKU

One

In leaves and grass, brave

Zinnia you alone have

Raised a red flower.

Two

Mowing summer-high

Lawn reduces to ruins

Empires of ants.

Three

Clouds grey summer dusk.

Magpie, what is it you cry

To the fading sky?

Four

January mist.

Through thin veils pale stars peer at

Dew on earth's darkness.

Five

Dawn zephyr with just

A touch of chillness whispers

Summer is passing.