Bread and Wine

By Friedrich Holderlin

Oh friend, we arrived too late. The divine energies
     Are still alive, but isolated above us, in the archetypal world.
They keep on going there, and, apparently, don't bother if
     Humans live or not... that is a heavenly mercy.
Sometimes a human's clay is not strong enough to take the water;
     Human beings can carry the divine only sometimes.
What is living now? Night dreams of them. But craziness
     Helps, so does sleep. Grief and Night toughens us,
Until people capable of sacrifice once more rock
     In the iron cradle, desire people, as the ancients, strong enough for water.
In thunderstorms it will arrive. I have the feeling often, meanwhile,
     It is better to sleep, since the Guest comes seldom;
We waste our life waiting, and I haven't the faintest idea
     How to act or talk... in the lean years who needs pots?
But poets as you say are like the holy disciple of the Wild One
     Who used to stroll over the fields through the whole divine night.

                                                         1803

Hyperion's Song of Destiny

Holy spirits, you walk up there
     in the light, on soft earth.
          Shining god-like breezes
               touch upon you gently,
                    as a woman's fingers
                         play music on holy strings.

Like sleeping infants the gods
     breathe without any plan;
          the spirit flourishes continually
               in them, chastely kept,
                    as in a small bud,
                         and their holy eyes
                              look out in still
                                   eternal clearness.

A place to rest
     isn't given to us.
          Suffering humans
               decline and blindly fall
                    from one hour to the next,
                         like water thrown
                              from cliff to cliff,
                                   year after year,
                                        down into the Unknown.

                                                     1799