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There will be a much longer post to follow on book(s) I am reading about Rainer Maria Rilke, but before I have to return these library books, I want to record the same poem in two different translations (from the German) by William H. Gass and Walter Arndt. I could add many subjective remarks at this point in my education, but I am going to stay out of it, and simply record these poems for the moment. Stay tuned. This whole Rilke experience is transforming my life. Which is exactly what he wants.

The Death of the Poet (translated by William H. Gass.)

He lay. His pillow-propped face could only stare
with pale refusal at the quiet coverlet,
now that the world and all his knowledge of it,
stripped from his senses to leave them bare,
had fallen back to an indifferent year.

Those who had seen him living could not know
how completely one he was with all that flowed;
for these: these deep valleys, each meadowed place,
these streaming waters were his face.

Oh, his face embraced this vast expanse,
which seeks him still and woos him yet;
now his last mask squeamishly dying there,
tender and open, has no more resistance,
than a fruit's flesh spoiling in the air.

The Death of the Poet (translated by Walter Arndt)

He lies there; the upslanted face appears
Pale and denying in the pillow's skew,
Now that the outer world, and that he knew
Of it, torn off from sense and view,
Has fallen back to the indifferent years.

Those knowing him alive were unaware
He was so of a piece with all of this:
For these, the sunken lands, the meadows there,
These waters, up to then had been his face.

His face--oh yes--walll that far-and-wide
Which still is seeking out and wooing him;
While this, his mask, now growing sadly dim,
Lies tender and exposed like the inside
Of an aired fruit decaying at the rim.

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