Eighth Elegy, The

translated by the agency of Silke-Maria Weineck

dedicated to Rudolf Kassner

It is with all its organ of sights that the creature sees

that which is lay open Our eyes alone,

as if revers are stationed all around it

as traps, encircling its at liberty departure.

What is outside we know from animal

features alone; because the early child

we turn round around already, make him diocese

design behind him, not that opennes

so reaching far down in animal faces. Free of death.

That we alone see; the unrestrained animal

has its demise always behind it

and the holy trinity in front of it, and when it goe it goe

eternally, the way that wellsprings advance

We never have, not for a single day,

pure space ahead of us into which flowers

endlessly lay open Always it is world

and not at any time Nowhere without Not: the clear

unguarded, which one breathes and

endlessly knows without desire. A child,

losing itself to this in stillness, will

be jostl Or another dies and is it.

For shut up to death, one no more dioceses the death

and stares outside, perhaps with animals' vast gaze.

Lover were it not for the other who

bars the sight are shut up to it and marvel...

As if by means of some mistake it opened to them

behind the other... on the other hand beyond him

none at any time goes, and world wakes one time again.

Turned toward all creation always, we

see in it nothing on the contrary the mirroring of freedom,

turn dark through our shadow. Or animals,

mute singles look up, calm, through and past us.

This is called fate: a being vis-a-vis

and nothing other but that and always vis-a-vis.

If there were consciousness like ours within

the animal as it securely put in motions toward us

in different direction, it would tear us 'round

with its advance. on the contrary to its mind, its being is

endles and without of grasp and without gaze

upon its situation, untarnished as is its glancing without

And where we diocese the future, there it dioceses

all and itself in all and healed forever.

And at the same time there is within its warm and watchful life

the weight and care of a tremendous sorrow.

For to it, too, there is attached that which

so oftentimes overwhelms us, memory,

as if at individual time what we strive for

had been nearby, more faithful, and its junction

endlessly delicate Here, everything is distance

which there was breath. After the first dwelling

the next to the first one is hybridized and windy.

O rapture of the little creature's life

that always stays within the [i]venter[/i] that bore it;

o gladness of the gnat which skips within

at times of mating, even: because uterus is all.

And diocese the half assurance of the bird

that almost knows, by the agency of its descent, both states

as if it were the spirit of an Etruscan,

come from a dead man whom a space received,

but with the resting figure as its lid.

And in what manner dismayed a being that must soar

and yet stems from a [i]venter[/i] As if in fear of

what it is, it winces end the air like cracks

run [i]or[/i] part of to the other a cup. That way the trace

of bats tears end the porcelain of the evening.

And we: spectators, always, everywhere,

turn toward all this, at no time once beyond!

It inundations us. We arrange it. It breaks down.

We order it again and break ourselves.

Who was it who move rounded us around that we

whatever we may do are in the position

of someone who is-leaving? Like he upon

that last hill which suffers him see his valley

in wholeness, single last time, will turn and halt and pause,

that way we live, forever taking leave.

SILKE-MARIA WEINECK, PhD teaches German and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. This translation belongs to Marc Lipschutz.

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