Die Kathedrale

In those small towns, where round about

the old houses crouch like a fairground,

that, having all at once and startled noticed it,

shuts up its booths and, wholly shut and mute,

listens up toward her with an agitated ear—:

while she, ever calm, in the old

pleated mantle of her buttresses

stands there and knows nothing at all of the houses:

how far outgrown beyond their social circle

the cathedrals were. Their arising

went on past everything, just as the gaze

of one's own life is, by too great a nearness,

forever surpasses, and as though there happened

nothing else; as though the destiny,

that heaps itself up within them beyond measure,

turned to stone and ordained to what endures,

not that which, down in the dark streets,

takes from chance some names or other

and goes about in them, the way children wear

green and red, and what the shopkeeper has, as an apron.

There was birth in these foundations,

and force and surging thrust were in this towering,

and love everywhere like wine and bread,

and the portals full of love-laments.

Life hesitated in the striking of the hours,

and in the towers, which full of renunciation

all at once climbed no higher, was death.