1 thought on “Days [ ) Enclosed | Robert Walser, 1914”
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I live my life in growing orbits which move out over the things of the world. Perhaps I can never achieve the last, but that will be my attempt.
I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years, and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song.
I live my life in growing orbits / The book of Hours / trslt. Robert Bly
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Tree arising! O pure ascendance! Orpheus Sings! Towering tree within the ear! Everywhere stillness, yet in this abeyance: seeds of change and new beginnings near. Creatures of silence emerged from the clear unfettered forest, from dens, from lairs. Not from shyness, this silence of theirs; nor from any hint of fear, simply from listening. Brutal shriek and roar dwindled in their hearts. Where stood a mere hut to house the passions of the ear, constructed of longing darkly drear, haphazardly wrought from front to rear, you built them a temple at listening's core.
1 /The Sonnets to Orpheus / trsl. Robert Hunter
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My eyes already touch the sunny hill, going far ahead of the road I have begun. So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp; it has its inner light, even from a distance—
and changes us, even if we do not reach it, into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are; a gesture waves us on, answering our own wave… but what we feel is the wind in our faces.
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I live my life in growing orbits
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.
I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years,
and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm,
or a great song.
I live my life in growing orbits / The book of Hours / trslt. Robert Bly
.
Tree arising! O pure ascendance! Orpheus Sings! Towering tree within the ear! Everywhere stillness, yet in this abeyance: seeds of change and new beginnings near. Creatures of silence emerged from the clear unfettered forest, from dens, from lairs. Not from shyness, this silence of theirs; nor from any hint of fear, simply from listening. Brutal shriek and roar dwindled in their hearts. Where stood a mere hut to house the passions of the ear, constructed of longing darkly drear, haphazardly wrought from front to rear, you built them a temple at listening's core.
1 /The Sonnets to Orpheus / trsl. Robert Hunter
.
My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has its inner light, even from a distance—
and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are;
a gesture waves us on, answering our own wave…
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.
A Walk /trslt. Robert Bly
Rainer Maria Rilke
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