A Rilke poem

[robot_mel]

I liked many of Rilke's poems years ago in translation and was just recently reminded of them by Gabriella, and now I know a tiny bit of German I thought it was time to invest in some of his poetry untranslated. Yesterday while Bill and I were out book shopping, I found, among other things, a book containing one of my old favorites.

The English translation I had went like this:

You darkness, that I come from,
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes
a circle of light for everyone,
and then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything:
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them!-
powers and people-

and it is possible a great energy
is moving near me.

I have faith in nights.

The original:
Du Dunkelheit, aus ich stamme,
ich liebe dich mehr als die Flamme,
welche die Welt begrenzt,
indem sie glazt
fur irgend einen Kries
aus hem heraus kein Wesen von ihr Weiss.

Aber die Dunkelheit halt alles an sich:
Gestalten und Flammen, Tiere und mich,
wie sie's errafft,
Menshen und Machte-

Und es kann sein eine grosse Kraft
ruhrt sich in meiner Nachbarschaft.

Ich glaube an Nachte.

Of course half way through I realized i don't know how to make the diacritical marks appear so it's kinda wrong. But hopefully close enough, and hopefully I'll be able to fix it later.

Now I have to decide whether I should spend my night trying to translate German or Chinese poetry!