Rainer Maria Rilke: translations from “Neue Gedichte” (1907) by Albert Ernest Flemming

Rainer Maria Rilke (Bohemia/Austria, German-language existential/mystical poet, 1875-1926)
Portrait of My Father as a Young Man
.
In the eyes: dream. The brow as if it could feel
something far off. Around the lips, a great
freshness – seductive, though there is no smile.
Under the rows of ornamental braid
on the slim Imperial officer’s uniform:
the saber’s basket-hilt. Both hands stay
folded upon it, going nowhere, calm
and now almost invisible, as if they
were the first to grasp the distance and dissolve.
And all the rest so curtained within itself,
so cloudy, that I cannot understand
this figure as it fades into the background –
.
Oh quickly disappearing photograph
in my more slowly disappearing hand.
. . .
Self-Portrait
.
The steadfastness of generations of nobility
shows in the curving lines that form the eyebrows.
And the blue eyes still show traces of childhood fears
and of humility here and there, not of a servant’s,
yet of one who serves obediantly, and of a woman.
The mouth formed as a mouth, large and accurate,
not given to long phrases, but to express
persuasively what is right. The forehead without guile
and favouring the shadows of quiet downward gazing.
.
This, as a coherent whole, only casually observed;
never as yet tried in suffering or succeeding,
held together for an enduring fulfillment,
yet so as if for times to come, out of these scattered things,
something serious and lasting were being planned.

RMR poems: from his Neue Gedichte (published in 1907)

Translations from German into English by Albert Ernest Flemming (1983)
. . .
Images:
Portrait drawings of 16th-century “German” noblemen: by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), and by Lucas Cranach the Younger (1515-1586). First drawn by The Elder, and the second and third by The Younger.
. . . . .