let now no altering angel cloud the sight
that summons all things into the Delights.
who has read Rilke dearly
expensively has read the night
beyond the face of stars
and all we are or could be
if we but lingered, dreamed
where he had wandered, on our own stair.
let no altering angel close the ear
let no despair shut out
the sound of roses, rains reclaimed, transformed
old legends burnished and the leaves drifting down the
young winds entwined again or
the endless plains of feeling out of sight
but intimated here. but There!
in verse unscrolling like the silver disc
of Time hammered out, immemorially engraved.
not distant!
the heart cries out from trivialties absolved.
for- God.
let now no altering angel ban the flight
of the real nightingale
into the jeweled wood
from childhood fears and fragments of fears
shadowing forth great Light.
tears suspended;
the whole earth revolving within.
mary angela douglas 1 february 2017
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
I have been reading Rilke for 61 years and will continue to do even as I climb the Mountains of Primeval Grief he imagined in his Tenth Elegy and one of the Young Laments guides me to my fate on the other side of life. Your poem is remarkable: I truly felt I was listening to his voice as I read it - his startling intimacy, his quiet prophetic tone, his confidence in poetic language - all of these traits you created in your echoing poem. And there isn't a trace of egoism or vanity in your poem. Like Rilke's, your poem is mission.... My favorite line of Rilke is actually prose, from a letter to his Polish translator: EVERYWHERE TRANSIENCE PLUNGES INTO DEEP BEING.... I have the deepest regard for what you have written. To say THANK YOU is either inadequate or redundant, but it's also human - So Thank You, Mary!