Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Translator's Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Neue Gedichte / New Poems
- Early Apollo
- Girl's Lament
- Love Song
- Eranna to Sappho
- Sappho to Eranna
- Sappho to Alcaeus
- Epitaph of a Young Girl
- Oblation
- Eastern Aubade
- Abishag
- David Sings before Saul
- Joshua's Gathering
- The Prodigal Son's Departure
- The Mount of Olives
- Pietà
- The Women's Song to the Poet
- The Death of the Poet
- Buddha
- L'Ange du Méridien
- The Cathedral
- The Portal
- The Rose Window
- The Capital
- God in the Middle Ages
- Morgue
- The Prisoner
- The Panther
- The Gazelle
- The Unicorn
- St. Sebastian
- The Donor
- The Angel
- Roman Sarcophagi
- The Swan
- Childhood
- The Poet
- The Lace
- A Woman's Fate
- The Convalescent
- The Grown-Up
- Tanagra
- The Woman Going Blind
- In a Strange Park
- Parting
- Death Experience
- Blue Hydrangea
- Before the Summer Rain
- In the Drawing Room
- Final Evening
- Youthful Portrait of My Father
- Self-Portrait from the Year 1906
- The King
- Resurrection
- The Standard-Bearer
- The Last Count of Brederode Evades Turkish Captivity
- The Courtesan
- The Stairs of the Orangerie
- The Marble Cart
- Buddha
- Roman Fountain
- The Carousel
- Spanish Dancer
- The Tower
- The Square
- Quai du Rosaire
- Béguinage
- The Procession of the Virgin Mary
- The Island
- Tombs of the Hetaerae
- Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes
- Alcestis
- Birth of Venus
- The Bowl of Roses
- Part II Der neuen Gedichte anderer Teil / The New Poems: The Other Part
- Index of Titles and First Lines in German
- Index of Titles and First Lines in English
The Procession of the Virgin Mary
from Part I - Neue Gedichte / New Poems
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2016
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Translator's Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Neue Gedichte / New Poems
- Early Apollo
- Girl's Lament
- Love Song
- Eranna to Sappho
- Sappho to Eranna
- Sappho to Alcaeus
- Epitaph of a Young Girl
- Oblation
- Eastern Aubade
- Abishag
- David Sings before Saul
- Joshua's Gathering
- The Prodigal Son's Departure
- The Mount of Olives
- Pietà
- The Women's Song to the Poet
- The Death of the Poet
- Buddha
- L'Ange du Méridien
- The Cathedral
- The Portal
- The Rose Window
- The Capital
- God in the Middle Ages
- Morgue
- The Prisoner
- The Panther
- The Gazelle
- The Unicorn
- St. Sebastian
- The Donor
- The Angel
- Roman Sarcophagi
- The Swan
- Childhood
- The Poet
- The Lace
- A Woman's Fate
- The Convalescent
- The Grown-Up
- Tanagra
- The Woman Going Blind
- In a Strange Park
- Parting
- Death Experience
- Blue Hydrangea
- Before the Summer Rain
- In the Drawing Room
- Final Evening
- Youthful Portrait of My Father
- Self-Portrait from the Year 1906
- The King
- Resurrection
- The Standard-Bearer
- The Last Count of Brederode Evades Turkish Captivity
- The Courtesan
- The Stairs of the Orangerie
- The Marble Cart
- Buddha
- Roman Fountain
- The Carousel
- Spanish Dancer
- The Tower
- The Square
- Quai du Rosaire
- Béguinage
- The Procession of the Virgin Mary
- The Island
- Tombs of the Hetaerae
- Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes
- Alcestis
- Birth of Venus
- The Bowl of Roses
- Part II Der neuen Gedichte anderer Teil / The New Poems: The Other Part
- Index of Titles and First Lines in German
- Index of Titles and First Lines in English
Summary
Ghent
From every tower, molten metal flows
and flows, poured down in masses — floods so great
that down there, from the mold that is the street,
it shines, as if from cast bronze, daylight rose.
Up on that raised and hammered rim one spies
the threaded, gaudy, parti-colored frieze:
a stream of slight young girls and fresh-faced boys.
And as its undulant waves pulse, swim, and rise,
upholding from below the dubious weight
of banners, obstacles loom up to meet
its flowing, which God's unseen hand restrains.
And suddenly — there — swept up in the heat
of the moment almost by the curled smoke,
the seven censers fly up, terror-struck,
trying to break their silver chains.
Onlookers bank this stream-bed they define,
where everything slows down, then rolls and rushes —
what's coming and what's chryselephantine.
Unsteady baldachins, whose trappings shine,
Rise up to balconies their gold cloth brushes.
All recognize, in Spanish finery
aloft above the flowing white, the old
statue. It is a little effigy,
its face uplifted and the infant held
there on its knees. Now ever-closer, pressing
on in innocent and guileless crown,
it gestures always, never looking down —
out of the thick brocade, a wooden blessing.
But since they look up shyly from below
as she begins to pass the faithful kneeling;
and since it seems that she commands them so
with what her raised up, brown eyes are revealing
(proud eyes — indignant, certain, and abrupt):
they stand astonished, undecided, torn.
And then they go. But she is taken up
within that stream — a hundred different gaits,
and yet alone, along a path well-worn.
The thundering-belled cathedral's maw awaits.
And by their women-shoulders she is borne.
Die Insel
Nordsee
I
Die nächste Flut verwischt den Weg im Watt,
und alles wird auf allen Seiten gleich;
die kleine Insel draußen aber hat
die Augen zu; verwirrend kreist der Deich
um ihre Wohner, die in einen Schlaf
geboren werden, drin sie viele Welten
verwechseln, schweigend; denn sie reden selten,
und jeder Satz ist wie ein Epitaph
für etwas Angeschwemmtes, Unbekanntes,
das unerklärt zu ihnen kommt und bleibt.
Und so ist alles was ihr Blick beschreibt
von Kindheit an: nicht auf sie Angewandtes,
zu Großes, Rücksichtsloses, Hergesandtes,
das ihre Einsamkeit noch übertreibt.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- New Poems , pp. 141 - 142Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2015