Michael Edwards

Recently, I discovered Seamus Heaney’s translation of three poems by Rainer Maria Rilke. Heaney and Rilke are two poets I enjoy and am deeply influenced by, so this was an exciting event.

To hear the dramatic, existential voice of Rilke, translated into the music of Heaney’s English is something special to have found. These poems may have later appeared in one of Heaney’s volumes of poetry, but I’m not certain (further research required).

Under trees here like trees in a Dürer woodcut –
Pendent, pruned, the husbandry of years
Gravid in them until the fruit appears –
Ready to serve, replete with patience, rooted

in the knowledge that no matter how above
Measure or expectation, all must be
Harvested and yielded, when a long life willingly
Cleaves to what’s willed and grows in quiet resolve.

Excerpt from — ‘Rilke: The Apple Orchard’ (trans. Seamus Heaney)

The London Review of Books published three of Heaney’s translations in May of 2005. Read all three of them here.