Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenlypressed me against his heart,
I would perishin the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terrorwhich we are barely able to endure and are awedbecause it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so I force myself, swallow and hold backthe surging call of my dark sobbing.
Oh, to whom can we turn for help?
Not angels, not humans;and even the knowing animals are aware that we feellittle secure and at home in our interpreted world.
There remains perhaps some tree on a hillsidedaily for us to see; yesterday's street remains for usstayed, moved in with us and showed no signs of leaving.
Oh, and the night, the night, when the windfull of cosmic space invades our frightened faces.
Whom would it not remain for -that longed-after,gently disenchanting night, painfully there for thesolitary heart to achieve?
Is it easier for lovers?
Don't you know yet ?
Fling out of your arms the emptiness into the spaces we breath -perhaps the birdswill feel the expanded air in their more ferven flight.
Yes, the springtime were in need of you.
Often a starwaited for you to espy it and sense its light.
A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past,or as you walked below an open window,a violin gave itself to your hearing.
All this was trust.
But could you manage it?
Were you not always distraught by expectation,as if all this were announcing the arrivalof a beloved? (Where would you find a placeto hide her, with all your great strange thoughts coming and going and often staying for the night.)When longing overcomes you, sing of women in love;for their famous passion is far from immortal enough.
Those whom you almost envy, the abandoned anddesolate ones, whom you found so much more lovingthan those gratified.
Begin ever new againthe praise you cannot attain; remember:the hero lives on and survives; even his downfallwas for him only a pretext for achievinghis final birth.
But nature, exhausted, takes loversback into itself, as if such creative forces could never beachieved a second time.
Have you thought of Gaspara Stampa sufficiently:that any girl abandoned by her lover may feelfrom that far intenser example of loving:"Ah, might I become like her!" Should not their oldestsufferings finally become more fruitful for us?
Is it not time that lovingly we freed ourselvesfrom the beloved and, quivering, endured:as the arrow endures the bow-string's tension,and in this tense release becomes more than itself.
For staying is nowhere.
Voices, voices.
Listen my heart, as only saintshave listened: until the gigantic call lifted themclear off the ground.
Yet they went on, impossibly,kneeling, completely unawares: so intense wastheir listening.
Not that you could endurethe voice of God -far from it!
But listento the voice of the wind and the ceaseless messagethat forms itself out of silence.
They sweeptoward you now from those who died young.
Whenever they entered a church in Rome or Naples,did not their fate quietly speak to you as recentlyas the tablet did in Santa Maria Formosa?
What do they want of me? to quietly removethe appearance of suffered injustice that,at times, hinders a little their spirits fromfreely proceeding onward.
Of course, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer,to no longer use skills on had barely time to acquire;not to observe roses and other things that promisedso much in terms of a human future, no longerto be what one was in infinitely anxious hands;to even discard one's own name as easily as a childabandons a broken toy.
Strange, not to desire to continue wishing one's wishes.
Strange to notice all that was related, flutteringso loosely in space.
And being dead is hard workand full of retrieving before one can gradually feel atrace of eternity. -Yes, but the liviing makethe mistake of drawing too sharp a distinction.
Angels (they say) are often unable to distinguishbetween moving among the living or the dead.
The eternal torrent whirls all ages along with it,through both realms forever, and their voices are lost inits thunderous roar.
In the end the early departed have no longerneed of us.
One is gently weaned from thingsof this world as a child outgrows the needof its mother's breast.
But we who have need of those great mysteries, we for whom grief isso often the source of spiritual growth,could we exist without them?
Is the legend vain that tells of music's beginningin the midst of the mourning for Linos?the daring first sounds of song piercingthe barren numbness, and how in that stunned spacean almost godlike youth suddenly left forever,and the emptiness felt for the first timethose harmonious vibrations which now enraptureand comfort and help us.
