RAINER MARIA RILKE - THE BLIND WOMAN
Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke from "The Book of Images" /
Recitation: Corinna Harfouch, Otto Schenk /
THE STRANGER:
You aren't afraid to speak of it?
THE BLIND WOMAN:
No.
It is so distant. That was another.
The one who saw then, who lived loudly and gazing,
who died.
THE STRANGER:
And had a difficult death?
THE BLIND WOMAN:
Dying is cruelty to the unsuspecting.
One must be strong, even when a stranger dies.
THE STRANGER:
She was a stranger to you?
THE BLIND WOMAN:
Or: she became one.
Death alienates even the child from its mother.
But it was terrible in the first few days.
My whole body was sore. The world,
which blooms and ripens in things,
was torn from me by its roots,
with my heart (it seemed to me), and I lay
open like disturbed earth and drank
the cold rain of my tears,
which flowed ceaselessly and softly from my dead eyes, like clouds babbling from empty skies when God has died.
And my hearing was great and open to everything.
I heard things that are inaudible:
time flowing over my hair,
the silence that resonated in delicate glasses,
and felt: near my hands went
the breath of a great white rose.
And again and again I thought: night and: night
and believed I saw a bright streak,
which would grow like a day;
and believed I was walking towards the morning,
which had long been in my hands.
I would wake my mother when sleep fell heavily from my dark face, I would call to my mother: "Come here! Light it!" And I listened. Long, long it remained still, and I felt my pillows turn to stone, - then it was as if I saw something shining: that was my mother's sorrowful weeping, which I no longer wish to think about. Light it! Light it! I often cried it in my dreams: The room has collapsed. Take the room from my face and from my breast. You must lift it, lift it up, you must give it back to the stars; I cannot live like this, with the sky on me. But am I speaking to you, Mother? Or to whom then? Who is behind it? Who is behind the curtain? - Winter? Mother: Storm? Mother: Night? Tell me! Or: Day?.......Day! Without me! How can it be day without me? Am I missed nowhere? Does no one ask about me? Are we completely forgotten? We?.......But you are there; you still have everything, don't you? All things still strive to please your face. When your eyes rest, and however tired they may have been, they can rise again. ... Mine are silent. My flowers will lose their color. My mirrors will freeze over. The lines in my books will grow together. My birds will flutter about in the alleys and twist themselves against strangers' windows. Nothing is connected to me anymore. I am abandoned by everything. - I am an island.
THE STRANGER:
And I came across the sea.
THE BLIND WOMAN:
What? To the island?... Come here?
THE STRANGER:
I am still in the boat.
I laid it on quietly -
to you. It is moved:
its flag waves across the land.
THE BLIND WOMAN:
I am an island and alone.
I am rich. -
At first, when the old paths were still
in my nerves, worn
by much use:
then I suffered too.
Everything left my heart,
at first I didn't know where to go;
but then I found them all there,
all the feelings, that which I am,
stood gathered and pressed and cried out
at the walled-up eyes that did not stir.
All my seduced feelings...
I don't know if they stood like that for years,
but I know of the weeks,
when they all came back broken
and recognized no one.
Then the path to the eyes grew closed.
I don't know it anymore.
Now everything wanders around inside me,
safe and carefree; Like convalescents,
the feelings walk, enjoying the walking,
through my body's dark house.
Some are readers
over memories;
but the young ones all look out.
For where they tread at my edge,
my garment is of glass.
My brow sees, my hand reads
poems in other hands.
My foot speaks with the stones it treads upon,
every bird takes my voice with it
from the daily walls.
I need lack nothing now,
all colors are translated
into sound and smell.
And they sound infinitely beautiful
as tones.
What use is a book to me?
The wind rustles the leaves in the trees;
and I know what words are there,
and sometimes repeat them softly.
And death, which breaks eyes like flowers,
does not find my eyes...
THE STRANGER softly:
I know.