"The hour comes to a close and touches me / with a clear metalic chime: my senses tremble."

[larryhammer]

I don't often brag on my family, but given this, I have to. Or at least, really want to.

The past year, my mother has been occupying herself with translating Rilke. She also got some bookbinding lessons from Janni this past winter. It eventually occurred to her that with a calligraphy pen, she could combine the two projects. I haven't seen the result yet -- she is working on one last poem* -- but I would have if my portion of the DC trip** had not been canceled by an improper collation of my appendix.*** So instead, she's sent me a photocopy.

Pretty neat stuff. And I don't just say that because I've always envied her calligraphic hand. It's all short poems, from Book of Hours, Book of Images, and New Poems. I'd post one to show off, but I don't have permission.

So you'll just have to take my word for it that I have some cool parents.


* "Die Kathedrale," and like her I do not understand how to read the last three lines.

** Which was, btw, for the internment of my uncle (my mother's brother) in Arlington National Cemetery.

*** Regarding which, the rebinding has been a slow, manual process, but continues well.

---L.

Comments

[maryosmanski.livejournal.com]

Would it help to know that Stundenschlagen might not just be the striking of the hour (on a clock)? The phrase "seine Stunde hat geschlagen" means "his hour or time has come," and I could see that line becoming, "Life, when its final hour came, hesitated...."

[larryhammer]

It's the welche clause that I don't get -- and how it attaches to the previous. (And how this sentence transitions from the previous, but that's a different issue.)

---L.

[maryosmanski.livejournal.com]

"And in the towers, which in complete resignation [from their customary role?] suddenly no longer rose up, was Death."

[larryhammer]

So "voll Entsagen" as adverbial -- okay, that makes more sense.

---L.