Observations placeholder

Duino Elegies – Rainer Maria Rilke [The Fifth  Elegy]

Angel! O, gather it, pluck it, that small-flowered healing herb.
Make a vase, keep it safe! Place it among those joys not yet open to us:
on a lovely urn,
praise it, with flowery, swirling, inscription:

                                  ‘Subrisio Saltat: the Saltimbanque’s smile’

You, then, beloved,
you, that the loveliest delights
silently over-leapt.
Perhaps your frills are happy for you –
or the green metallic silk,
over your firm young breasts,
feels itself endlessly pampered, and needing nothing.

You, market fruit of serenity laid out, endlessly, on all the quivering balance scales,
publicly, beneath the shoulders.

Where, oh where is the place – I carry it in my heart –
where they were still far from capable, still fell away
from each other, like coupling animals, not yet ready for pairing: -
where the weights are still heavy:
where the plates still topple
from their vainly twirling
sticks.......

And, suddenly, in this troublesome nowhere, suddenly, the unsayable point where the pure too-little is changed incomprehensibly - altered into that empty too-much.

Where the many-placed calculation is exactly resolved.