I Am Much Too Alone In This World

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) almost exactly straddles the 19th and 20th century, dying of leukemia at age 51 in Switzerland, though his best literary years were in Paris (1902-1914) where, for a time, he was Rodin's secretary(!).  Both a poet and a novelist, he was admired by his contemporaries but not broadly popularized until after his death.  His reputation has grown over time, his lyrical style, of which this selection is not a prime example, striking. 

For me, this poem captures that yearning to know and be known - authentically, purely - that should be at the start of every love.  It's a manifesto of good intentions that, hopefully, can be carried out through the right balancing of risk/self-protection.  It's also a plea that, one hopes, is shared by the love object and to the same degree.  

(I chose this oil of him vs. a photograph since this is more flattering.  By far.)

I am much too alone


I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small
enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.

I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
never be blind or too old
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;
for there I would be dishonest, untrue.
I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everyday jug,
like my mother's face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm.

Let's invite something new
by unifying our silences;
if, then and there, we advance,
we'll know it soon enough.

                                                                   Rainer Maria Rilke (transl. by Annemarie S.Kilder)

A Variation on “To Say To Go To Sleep” - R. Jarrell

 This is sort of a "two-fer": Randall Jarrell's riff (in English) on a poem (in German) by Rainer Maria Rilke.  It shows both Jarrell's skills as both a poet and a translator (in addition to being an essayist, critic, and novelist).   Love - romantic love - is not his domain: his best work, to me, are his war/post-war poems.  In his collected poems, there are - barely - a half-dozen poems I would classify as "love poetry", not counting his translations of Rilke.  Of those, this one is my pick.  It speaks to aspects of love that aren't the most "glamorous" but are the most necessary: to feel safe and protected.  Jarrell was only 51 years old when he died in 1965.
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A Variation on “To Say To Go To Sleep”

                                                                            (adapted from Rainer Maria Rilke)
If I could, I would sing you to sleep.
I would give you my hand to keep
In yours till you fell asleep,
And take it away then, slowly.
I would sit by you and be.

In the world the dark would be deep.
I would watch. And at last I would sleep.

But if rain should star the stream
Of your sleep, I would whisper: “See
You are asleep”; and slowly,
Your breath would change in your dream
Till, ages and ages deep
In the dark, you would say to me:
“I love you.”
I love you,
But I am here always. Sleep now. Sleep.
                                                                                Randall Jarrell - American