Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated from the German by Steve Kronen
They’d grown used to him there, but when they lit
the kitchen lamp and the flame
fluttered in the dark, he, the one without a name,
seemed all the more un-nameable. They washed his throat

and knowing nothing of his life,
contrived one for the stranger.
One of them turned her head to cough
and set her sponge, soaked with vinegar,

on his face. The other paused
and drops fell from her stiff-bristled
brush while his contorted hand tried to convince
them, tried to show the entire house
that he no longer thirsted.

He no longer thirsted. And they, abashed,
coughed, and set again to work
but harder now and washed
the man. Their shadows on the silent walls jerked

and flailed as though inside a net until there came an end
to the washing. Night, in the bare window,
shrugged. And he, whose name they didn’t know,
naked and clean now,
gave commands.


Leichen-Wäsche

Sie hatten sich an ihn gewöhnt. Doch als
die Küchenlampe kam und unruhig brannte
im dunkeln Luftzug, war der Unbekannte
ganz unbekannt. Sie wuschen seinen Hals,

und da sie nichts von seinem Schicksal wussten,
so logen sie ein anderes zusamm,
fortwährend waschend. Eine musste husten
und ließ solang den schweren Essigschwamm

auf dem Gesicht. Da gab es eine Pause
auch für die zweite. Aus der harten Bürste
klopften die Tropfen; während seine grause
gekrampfte Hand dem ganzen Hause
beweisen wollte, dass ihn nicht mehr dürste.

Und er bewies. Sie nahmen wie betreten
eiliger jetzt mit einem kurzen Huster
die Arbeit auf, so dass an den Tapeten
ihr krummer Schatten in dem stummen Muster

sich wand und wälzte wie in einem Netze,
bis dass die Waschenden zu Ende kamen.
Die Nacht im vorhanglosen Fensterrahmen
war rücksichtslos. Und einer ohne Namen
lag bar und reinlich da und gab Gesetze.
from the journal ON THE SEAWALL 
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"I’ve tried, in 'Washing the Corpse,' to capture that Rilkean demand for our penetrating and solitary attention to the subject at hand and, (per Rilke), the attention placed on us by the subject at hand. I’ve followed Rilke’s rhyme scheme. This translation is included in a new manuscript, 'After Words - 50 Versions from Sappho to Claribel Alegría,' a collection of poems composed via others’ translations, cribs, commentaries, and dictionaries."  

Steve Kronen on "Washing the Corpse"
Cover of Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody's book, The Idea of Perfection: The Poetry and Prose of Paul Valery
"The Monumental and Human Poetry of Paul Valéry"

"It would be a mistake, however, to relegate Valéry to the graveyard of discarded statuary. The beauty and power of his best writing is undeniable, and the human dilemmas his work addresses—mortality, embodiment, the longing for perfection—remain with us."

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What Sparks Poetry:
Jennifer Atkinson on "Local History"

The island I called Hag Island in this poem isn’t, after the ten or so years since I wrote 'Local History,' an island anymore, not even at full high tide. What was island has become something more like a hump in the marsh. The salt brook that runs through has shallowed out and shifted. Everyday erosion and hurricane winds will do that."
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