Wednesday, October 26, 2011

More Windows



Window, a measure of waiting,
filled up so many times,
when a life pours out and grows
impatient for another life.


You pull apart and pull towards,
changeable as the sea,
a glass where, suddenly, our faces mirror
themselves and mix with what we see there.


A scrap of freedom compromised
by chance's presence;
taken up by something that's inside us that levels
with the superfluity of what's outside.


~

(Rilke, Windows IV.  My translation again.  I'll get around to appending the originals at some point.

Photos taken from London Bridge.  Not sure what the building is.)

11 comments:

marja-leena said...

oh, oh! fantastic reflections!!

the polish chick said...

lovely, as usual. by the way, i love the new masthead.

Jean said...

So gorgeous - Distorting windows are magical. Love your new header too!

Rosie said...

ooh wobbly glass is fun...lately, things have been looking like that anyway...but my new glasses should be here tomorrow

Sheila said...

These are just wonderful! So strange to think of life before glass....

marly youmans said...

I really like these, and the poem. Kind of want levels to end that line because it feels more leveling to be balanced there at the end...

Poor man's Gaudi!

The new masthead is good too--that greeny color and the shapes.

Lucy said...

Thanks all.

The banner photo was one of the aerial ones - I don't really know what it was - some kind of buoys or markers to do with the mussel beds, perhaps.

Marly, you are so right and it is so obvious I have changed it straightway. Thank you!

Jean said...

Your translations are lovely - not that I have a great knowledge of Rilke, but they feel very Rilkean. Please post the French :-)

Roderick Robinson said...

One is moved to squinch one's eyes and to ask whether there was wine with lunch on Mount Sion. I have to say London Bridge, otherwise known as the part of London which would fulfil a useful function were the capital to become constipated, hardly deserves this artistic treatment. Or perhaps it demands it. You see Newspeak intrudes on cultural as well as political matters.

Unknown said...

"...Something that's inside us that levels with the superfluity of what's outside"! That in particular impels me to look again at Rilke, preferably the Kempton translations.

zephyr said...

Wonderful photos, Lucy. And i love your new banner...i sensed immediately it was one of your aerials. That series = magical