Another translation of a Rilke poem, from the Sonnets to Orpheus, part II (29). Apart from the first tercet, which with its injunction to sensuous experience seems to be the centre of the poem, I enjoy the gradually unfolding ambiguity of address here, taking us from the bell as "friend of far distances" through its symbolization of human suffering and experience to free images that seem only to relate to humanity. Or perhaps music is the other addressee at the poem's end: the sound of the bell, that as sound must flow and die away, but in its immovable place and function marks the present moment, the nunc stans...
Still friend of far distances, the hour
Lets you breathe now, that vast space restoring
Beyond the dark and narrow-beamed bell-tower
Where you toll. That power which is drawing
On you: know it draws its strength thereby.
Move in and out, with change your course align;
When the bitter cup's before you, why
Then touch it? Rather turn yourself to wine.
Tonight the dark is uncontained, it lets you
Be at the crossing of your senses, know
The strange and binding power in their hand.
And if every worldly form forgets you,
Whisper to the silent earth: I flow,
To the water's swiftness: here I stand.
Still friend of far distances, the hour
Lets you breathe now, that vast space restoring
Beyond the dark and narrow-beamed bell-tower
Where you toll. That power which is drawing
On you: know it draws its strength thereby.
Move in and out, with change your course align;
When the bitter cup's before you, why
Then touch it? Rather turn yourself to wine.
Tonight the dark is uncontained, it lets you
Be at the crossing of your senses, know
The strange and binding power in their hand.
And if every worldly form forgets you,
Whisper to the silent earth: I flow,
To the water's swiftness: here I stand.
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