letters from barabbas

I hated this stuff when I was reading it for World Lit. Rainer Maria Rilke wrote these ten really complicated poems (in German) that were supposed to be exploring the meaning of life and all that, but none of us could understand any of them until Teach explained them to us. But this one, the last one, is pretty straightforward and stands on its own as a tribute to growing in our trials, learning from our sadness.
Now that I'm through with the class, these poems keep coming back in my mind. I'll probably share bits from the rest of the book later, but this one is enough for now. :)
There is some amazing poetry in this, so revel in the wordplay a little bit.
Pay attention to the last five stanzas. They are amazing.



The Tenth Elegy

Someday, at the end of the nightmare of knowing,
may I emerge singing praise and jubilation to assenting angels.
May I strike my heart's keys clearly, and may none fail
because of slack, uncertain, or fraying strings.
May the tears that stream down my face
make me more radiant: may my hidden weeping
bloom. How I will cherish you then, you grief-torn nights!
Had I only received you, inconsolable sisters,
on more abject knees, only buried myself with more abandon
in your loosened hair. How we waste our afflictions!
We study them, stare out beyond them into bleak continuance,
hoping to glimpse some end. Whereas they're really
our wintering foliage, our dark greens of meaning, one
of the seasons of the clandestine year--; not only
a season--: they're site, settlement, shelther, soil, abode.

Ah, but the City of Pain: how strange its streets are:
the false silence of sound drowning sound,
and there--proud, brazen, effluence from the mold of emptiness--
the gilded hubbub, the bursting monument.
How an Angel would stamp out their market of solaces,
set up alongside their church bought to order:
clean and closed and woeful as a post office on Sunday.
Outside, though, there's always the billowing of the fair.
Swings of Freedom! High-divers and Jugglers of Zeal!
And the shooting gallery with its figures of idiot Happiness
which jump, quiver, and fall with a tinny ring
whenever some better marksman scores. Onward he lurches from cheers
to change; for booths courting each curious taste
are drumming and barking. And then--for adults only--
a special show: how money breeds, its anatomy, not some charade:
money's genitals, everything, the whole act
from beginning to end--educational and guaranteed to make you
virile.........
....Oh, but just beyond that,
behind the last of the billboards, plastered with signs for "Deathless,"
that bitter beer which tastes sweet to those drinking it
as long as they have fresh distractions to chew...,
just beyond those boards, just on the other side: things are REAL.
Children play, lovers hold each other, off in the shadows,
pensive, on the meager grass, while dogs obey nature.
The youth is drawn farther on; perhaps he's fallen in love
with a young Lament.....He pursues her, enters meadowland. She says:
"It's a long way. We live out there..."
Where? And the youth follows.
Something in her bearing stirs him. Her shoulders, neck--,
perhaps she's of noble descent. Still, he leaves her, turns around,
glances back, waves...What's the use? She's a Lament.

Only the youthful dead, in the first state
of timeless equanimity, the phase of the unburdening,
follow her with loving steps. The girls
she waits for and befriends. Gently lets them see
the things that adorn her. Pearls of grief and the delicate
veils of suffrance.--When with young men
she walks on in silence.

Later, though, in the valley where they live, an older one, one of the
elder Laments,
adopts the youth when he asks questions:--Long ago,
she says, we Laments were a powerful race. Our forefathers
worked the mines in those giant mountains; among humans
sometimes you'll find a fragment of polished primeval grief,
or, from an old volcano, a slag of petrified wrath.
Yes, it came from here. We used to be rich.--
And she guides him quietly through the wide landscapes of Laments,
shows him the columns of temples, or the ruins
of those strongholds from which, long ago, Lament-Kings
wisely governed the land. Shows him the tall
trees of tears and the fields of flowering melancholy
(the living know them only as tender leaves):
shows him the animals of sorrow, grazing,--and sometimes
a bird startles, flies low through their lifted gazes, extends
into the distance the ancient glyph of its desolate cry.--
At evening she leads him out to the ancestral tombs
of the House of Lament, those of the sybils and the dire prophets.
But as night approaches, they move more slowly, until
suddenly, rising up moon-like, there appears: the great sepulchre
that watches over everything. Twin brother
to the one on the Nile, the exalted Sphinx--: visage
of the hidden chamber.
And they marvel at that kingly head, which silently,
for all time, has weighed the human face
in the stars' balance.

And higher, the stars. New ones. The stars of the Land of Pain.
Slowly the Lament names them: "There, look-
the Rider, the Staff, and that constellation with so many stars
they call: Calyx. And then, farther, toward the pole:
Cradle; Path; Puppet; Window; The Burning Book.
But in the southern sky, pure as if held in the palm
of a sacred hand: that clear, gleaming M
that means Mothers......"

But the dead youth must go on, and the elder Lament
leads him in silence as far as the wide ravine,
where they see shimmering in the moonlight:
the Font of Joy. She names it
reverently, saying, "Among the living
it becomes a powerful stream."

They stand at the foot of the range.
And she embraces him there, weeping.

He climbs on alone, into the mountains of primeval grief.
And no step rings back from that soundless fate.


But suppose the endless dead were to awake in us some emblem:
they might point to the catkins hanging
from the empty hazel trees, or direct us to the rain
descending on black earth in early spring.

And we, who always think of happiness
rising, would feel the emotion
that almost baffles us
when a happy thing falls.