Two Translations by Rachel Lott

Translations from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Das Buch der Bilder

Maiden Melancholy

A knight, as from a proverb old,
comes riding into mind.

He came. So through the wood and wold
the storm may come and all enfold.

He passed. So evening’s benison
may pass before your prayers are done,
forsaken by the bell;
and though you’d cry aloud with woe,
you only whimper, long and low
into your kerchief cold.

A knight, as from a proverb old,
rides armored, far and fell.

His smile was fine, and softly shone
like antique light on elven-bone,
like homesickness, like Christmas snow
on darkling rooftops, like the row
of pearls set round a turquoise stone;
like soft moon-glow
upon a book loved well.

_{Read the original German “Mädchenmelancholie” here.}

The Boy

When I grow up, I want to be like them.
They ride on wild horses through the night.
Their torches, in a trail of blazing light,
whip back like hair behind them in the wind.

I’d stand in front, as if to steer a barge,
large and like a flag I’d just unrolled,
dark, but with a helmet all of gold
alight and restless. At my back, in rank,
ten men from that same darkness in a flank,
with helmets glinting restlessly as mine,
now clear as glass, now dark and old and blind.

And one stands by me, trumpeting “make way!”
with blasts like lightning, driving all things back;
he trumpets us a loneliness so black
we speed like dreams along our rapid way.

The houses fall behind us to their knees,
beside us bow the alleys and the lanes,
we capture every place that tries to flee
and thunder on, our horses like the rains.

_{Read the original German “Der Knabe” here.}

Rachel Lott has a background is in medieval philosophy (PhD, University of Toronto), and currently teaches Latin, logic, and English writing at private online secondary schools. In her spare time she writes and translates poetry. Her poems have appeared in First Things, the children’s magazine Cricket, and on the website of the Society of Classical Poets.