From New Poems Rainer Maria Rilke Translated by Susan McLean (bio) Birth of Venus That morning, after the night—which had elapsedanxiously with cries, unrest, upheaval—all of the sea burst wide again and screamed.And when the screaming slowly stopped once moreand from the sky pale daylight and inceptionfell into the abyss of silent fish—the sea gave birth. The first sun shimmered on the foaming hairof the gaping wave-cleft, on the lip of whicharose the maiden, white, bewildered, wet.Just as a young green leaf begins to stir,stretches, and slowly opens what is furled,her body was unfolding in the coolnesswithin, in the immaculate breeze of dawn. Like moons, the knees rose limpidly and plungedinto the cloudy borders of the thighs;the slender shadows of the calves receded,the feet flexed and turned luminescent, andthe joints became more animated, likethe throats of drinkers. And in the cup of the pelvis lay the bellylike a young fruit inside the hand of a child.Within its navel’s tiny chalice wasall the darkness of this brilliant life. [End Page 73] Below it, the little waving curl rose lightlyand billowed constantly up toward the loins,where now and then a silent ripple moved.But shining through and still without a shadow,like a grove of birch in April, warm,empty, and unhidden, lay her sex. Now the shoulders’ lively scales alreadystood balanced squarely on the upright body,which from the pelvis rose up like a fountainand fell back haltingly in the long arms,and faster in the full cascade of hair. Then very gradually the face progressedfrom the foreshortened darkness of its bendingto clear and horizontal elevation.And after it, the chin closed off abruptly. Now, as the neck stretched like a jet of waterand like a flower stem whose sap is rising,the arms extended also, like the necksof swans when they are searching for the shore. Then came into this body’s dark awakeningthe first breath, like an early morning wind.In the most tender branches of the vein-treesarose a murmur, and the blood beganto rush around its deepest passages.And this wind burgeoned: now it threw itselfwith all its puffing into the new breastsand filled them and kept pressing into them—so that like sails, full of the faraway,they pushed the lightweight maiden to the shore. And so the goddess landed. [End Page 74] Behind her,who swiftly walked across the youthful shore,the flowers and the grass all morning longcame springing upward, warm, disoriented,as if from an embrace. And she walked and ran. But at midday, at the severest hour,the sea heaved upward once again and flunga dolphin out upon that selfsame spot.Dead, red and open. Tombs of the Hetaerae They lie in their long hair, their faces brown,having departed deep into themselves.Eyes closed as if before too vast a distance.Skeletons, mouths, flowers. In their mouthsthe polished teeth, like pocket chess game piecescrafted of ivory, laid out in rows.And flowers, yellowed pearls, and slender bones,hands and tunics, fading, shriveled fabricsover the caved-in hearts. However, therebeneath those rings and talismans and stonesas blue as eyes (cherished remembrances)still stands the silent grave-crypt of the sex,filled to its vaulted roof with flower petals.And, once more, yellowed pearls, rolled far apart—cups of terra cotta, whose curved fronttheir portrait had adorned, shattered green shardsof ointment vases with a smell like flowers,and shapes of little gods: from household altars,hetaerae-heavens with delighted gods.Broken belts, flat scarab stones, and smallfigurines with giant phalluses, [End Page 75] a laughing mouth and dancing girls and runners,golden fibulae like little bowsfor hunting beasts—and bird-shaped amulets,long needles, decorated household objects,and a round potsherd of red clay, on which,like an obscure inscription on an entrance,the tensed legs of a four-horse team appear.And once more, flowers, pearls that have rolled loose,the brightly shining loins of...