Duino Elegies : The Tenth Elegy

Some day, in the emergence from this fierce insight, let me sing jubilation and praise to assenting Angels. Let not a single one of the cleanly-struck hammers of my heart deny me, through a slack, or a doubtful, or a broken string. Let my streaming face make me more radiant: let my secret weeping bear flower. O, how dear you will be to me, then, Nights of anguish. Inconsolable sisters, why did I not kneel more to greet you, lose myself more in your loosened hair? We, squanderers of pain. How we gaze beyond them into duration’s sadness, to see if they have an end. Though they are nothing but our winter-suffering foliage, our dark evergreen, one of the seasons of our inner year – not only season - : but place, settlement, camp, soil, dwelling. Strange, though, alas, the streets of Grief-City, where, in the artificiality of a drowned-out false stillness, the statue cast from the mould of emptiness bravely swaggers: the gilded noise, the flawed memorial. O, how an Angel would utterly trample their market of solace, bounded by the Church, bought ready for use: untouched, disenchanted and shut like the post-office on Sunday. Beyond though, the outskirts are always alive with the fair. Swings of freedom! Divers and jugglers of zeal! And the figures at the shooting range of easy luck, targets that shake tinnily whenever some better marksman hits one. From applause at his luck he staggers on further: as booths for every taste are wooing him, drumming, and bawling. Here’s something special, only for adults, to view: how money is got, anatomy, not just to amuse: the private parts of money, all of it, the whole thing, the act, - to instruct and make potent.......O, but just beyond behind the last hoarding, plastered with adverts for ‘Deathless’, that bitter beer that tastes sweet to its drinkers, as long as they chew fresh distractions along with it...... just at the back of the hoardings, just behind them, it’s real. Children are playing, lovers are holding each other – to the side, sombrely, in the sparse grass, and dogs are following their nature. The youth is drawn on, further: perhaps it’s a young Lament he loves......He comes to the field, beyond her. She says: ‘It’s far. We live out there....’ ‘Where?’ And the youth follows. He is moved by her manner. Her shoulders, her neck – perhaps she’s from a notable family. But he leaves her, turns round, looks back, waves.......What’s the point? She’s a Lament. Only those who died young, in their first state of timeless equanimity, that of being weaned, follow her lovingly. She waits for girls and befriends them. She shows them gently what she is wearing. Pearls of grief and the fine veils of suffering. – With youths she walks on in silence. But there, where they live, in the valley, one of the older Laments, takes to the youth, when he questions: - ‘We were,’ she says, ‘a large family once, we Laments. Our ancestors worked the mines on that mountain-range: among men you’ll sometimes find a lump of polished primal grief, or the lava of frozen rage from some old volcano. Yes, that came from there. We used to be rich.’ - And she leads him gently through the wide landscape of Lament, shows him the columns of temples, the ruins of castles, from which the lords of Lament ruled the land, wisely. Shows him the tall Tear-trees, and the fields of flowering Sadness, (The living know it as only a tender shrub.) shows him the herds of Grief, grazing – and sometimes a startled bird, flying low through their upward glance, will inscribe on the far distance the written form of its lonely cry – At evening she leads him to the graves of the elders of the race of Laments, the sibyls and prophets. But as night falls, so they move more softly, and soon, like a moon, the all-guarding sepulchre rises. Brother to that of the Nile, the tall Sphinx, the secret chamber’s countenance. And they are astonished by the regal head, that forever, silently, positioned the human face in the scale of the stars. His sight cannot grasp it, still dizzied by early death. But her gaze frightens an owl from behind the rim of the crown, and the bird brushes, with slow skimming flight, along the cheek, the one with the richer curve, and inscribes the indescribable outline, on the new hearing born out of death, as though on the doubly-unfolded page of a book. And higher: the stars. New stars, of Grief-Land. Slowly the Lament names them: ‘There, see: the Rider, the Staff, and that larger constellation they name Fruit-Garland. Then, further, towards the Pole: the Cradle, the Way, the Burning Book, the Doll, the Window. But in the southern sky, pure as on the palm of a sacred hand, the clearly shining M, that stands for the Mothers......’ But the dead must go on, and in silence the elder Lament leads him as far as the ravine, where the fountain of joy glistens in moonlight. With awe she names it saying: ‘Among men this is a load-bearing river.’ They stand at the foot of the mountains. And there she embraces him, weeping. He climbs alone, on the mountains of primal grief. And not once do his footsteps sound from his silent fate. But if the endlessly dead woke a symbol in us, see, they would point perhaps to the catkins, hanging from bare hazels, or they would intend the rain, falling on dark soil in Spring-time. – And we, who think of ascending joy, would feel the emotion, that almost dismays us, when a joyful thing falls.