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Saturday, October 31, 2020

Pic of the Day (with a Poem)

 


Black Cat 

By Rainer Maria Rilke

 

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

 

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place

your sight can knock on, echoing; but here

within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze

will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

 

just as a raving madman, when nothing else

can ease him, charges into his dark night

howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels

the rage being taken in and pacified.

 

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen

into her, so that, like an audience,

she can look them over, menacing and sullen,

and curl to sleep with them. But all at once

 

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;

and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,

inside the golden amber of her eyeballs

suspended, like a prehistoric fly.

 


Schwarze Katze

By Rainer Maria Rilke


The original German

 

Ein Gespenst ist noch wie eine Stelle,

dran dein Blick mit einem Klange stößt;

aber da, an diesem schwarzen Felle

wird dein stärkstes Schauen aufgelöst:

 

wie ein Tobender, wenn er in vollster

Raserei ins Schwarze stampft,

jählings am benehmenden Gepolster

einer Zelle aufhört und verdampft.

 

Alle Blicke, die sie jemals trafen,

scheint sie also an sich zu verhehlen,

um darüber drohend und verdrossen

zuzuschauern und damit zu schlafen.

Doch auf einmal kehrt sie, wie geweckt,

ihr Gesicht und mitten in das deine:

und da triffst du deinen Blick im geelen

Amber ihrer runden Augensteine

unerwartet wieder: eingeschlossen

wie ein ausgestorbenes Insekt.

 


 

“Black Cat” was originally published in Rilke’s 1923 collection Duino Elegies. Rilke began writing this collection in 1912, but it remained unfinished for a decade before being completed and published.


Happy Halloween!

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