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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.

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