Rilke to Tsvetaeva, Jealous over Pasternak

I’m surprised but delighted that this is easily the most “liked” and reblogged translation on my Tumblr account, and a close second to the recent original “first-degree” poem of my own,  Tethering – For Davo.

***
We touch from afar. But how? With airborne
brushes our beating wings stir each other.
Poets live alone. Sometimes another
one comes forth, one who bears what we have borne.

Wir rühren uns, womit? Mit Flügel-Schlägen,
mit Fernen selber rühren wir uns an.
Ein Dichter einzig lebt, und dann und wann
kommt, der ihm trägt, dem, der ihn trug, entgegen.

Val Mont Glion, Canton Vaud. 3 Mai 1926 (cited from Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Rilke)

 

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Versailles or Vichy?

I have moved the post with this title to my new blog, Geoplots, my goal being to protect the tenor of personal and, for quite a while now, poetic content here on Like a Log from the political tirades to which I am wont. Geoplots does have its inner logic, though, and will be residing somewhere along the boundary between the factual and the counterfactual, roughly the same zone where poetry finds its home, and our notions of self take root.