chiservant

at once calling out and anxious,
that someone might hear my call,
destined to vanish
in another

The First Elegy 

Who, if I cried, could hear me among the angelic
orders? And even if one of them impulsively
took me to his heart, I should perish
in his stronger existence. For the beautiful is nothing
but the feared beginning of what we at length endure
and that which we admire is its calm disdain
to destroy us. Each and every angel is fearful,

And so I repress myself, and swallow the call-note
of the dark sobbing. Ah, who is there that we are able
to make use of? Not angels, not men,
and even the sensing animals know
that we are not securely at home
in our interpreted world. There remains to us perhaps
some tree or other on the hillside to be daily
met with again; there is yesterday's street
and the spoilt devotion of a habit
that liked us and stayed and never gave notice. 

Oh, and the night, the night, when the wind-fuller space
erodes our faces — for whom would she not remain, the yearned for,
the gently disappointing one, whom the single heart 
arduously is approaching? Is she the truth for lovers?
Alas, they only obscure in each other their destiny.

Don't you know that yet? Fling out of your arms the emptiness;
add it to the spaces we breathe; maybe the birds
will feel the enlarged air with more ardent flight.

She was playing with her cat:

And it was lovely to see

The white hand and white paw

Fight, in shadows of eve.

She hid – little wicked one! –

In black silk mittens

Claws of murderous agate,

Fierce and bright as kittens’.

The other too was full of sweetness,

Sheathing her sharp talons’ caress,

Though the devil lacked nothing there…

And in the bedroom, where sonorous

Ethereal laughter tinkled in the air,

There shone four points of phosphorus.

The Queen

I have named you queen.
There are taller ones than you, taller.
There are purer ones than you, purer.
There are lovelier than you, lovelier.

But you are the queen.

When you go through the streets
no one recognizes you.
No one sees your crystal crown, no one looks
at the carpet of red gold
that you tread as you pass,
the nonexistent carpet.

And when you appear
all the rivers sound
in my body, bells
shake the sky,
and a hymn fills the world.

Only you and I,
only you and I, my love,
listen to it.

Even when she walks she seems to dance! 
Her garments writhe and glisten like long snakes 
obedient to the rhythm of the wands 
by which a fakir wakens them to grace.

As the slave of Mme. von Dunajew he is to bear the name Gregor, and he is unconditionally to comply with every one of her wishes, and to obey every one of her commands; he is always to be submissive to his mistress, and is to consider her every sign of favor as an extraordinary mercy.