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MARIÀ MANENT (1898-1988)
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- THE SITE OF RILKE'S TOMB
- (Rarogne, Valais)
(Translation by Sam Abrams)
- You lie in the ultimate
- resting place, aloft the dark rocks,
- with the hilltop ivy that doesn't fear
- February frost. Your cross is rather coarse,
- the burial vault of shepherds and peasants,
- and you are walled in by porous stone
- like a worm-eaten bride's chest. Snowflakes and sun-beat
- have turned the cross grey, the shade of mist.
- Yet at your grave site there is a touch of pride:
- a chiselled coat of arms, something come from a fable
- of the Austrian past, crowning the fortified village,
- solitary and final, where your word now dwells.
- Here lies the brow that often bowed
- to silence and darkness;
- and when the wind from the Alps sweeps the snow
- across the withered blades of grass, the peasants, arriving
- from vineyards where they tend grape stocks shaped like lyres,
- are unaware that hidden beneath the cross is the bluish tint,
- the fear in your artless eyes and the ivy sighs
- above the heart that never met with peace.
- TO MY DAUGHTER MARIA WHEN SHE WAS ONE, DURING THE WAR
(Translation by Sam Abrams)
- The branches of the fir draw near the eaves
- and, far off, what deep-toned sound makes the window shiver?
- The mountains are sad at the heart of cold,
- and sad is the smell of meager stew.
- Like the root, like the fruit in the mist of the orchard,
- upon the unblemished breast you nurse, asleep,
- and this lukewarm silence of life
- resembles the silence of the grave.