Goethe'sWanderers Nachtlied Und Ein Einfacheres

When Goethe was thirty years old, he visited a mountain lodge in Kickenheim, Thuringia, Germany. During the night he stayed there, he wrote what became one of the most famous poems in the German language. He carved it onto the wall. It is called "Wanderers Nachtlied"--I imagine that most people who know German and have even the slightest literary bent know this poem by heart. I recount it by heart as follows:

Ueber allen Gipfeln
ist Ruh;
in allen Wipfeln
spuerest Du
kaum einen Hauch.
Die Voegellein
schweigen im Walde;
Warte nur, balde
ruhest Du auch.

A prose translation: above the summits is peace; you can hardly sense anything stirring in the treetops; little birds are silent in the forest; just wait, you, too, will soon rest.

Talk about trickle-down serenity! Let's start at the bottom, the human being who is not at rest, presumably beset by anxiety and by life's vicissitudes, as we all, in varying degrees are. Directly above him is the relative peace of the birds, silenced, one imagines, by the peace at the next higher level: the treetops, which are hardly moving at all--all is almost completely calm. Ah, but the all, represented by the summits, is indeed absolutely calm. Goethe tells us in a direct, simple matter that all we have to do is allow the absolute peace of the summit to trickle down; then we will find peace, too. (The words "just wait" in the next-to-last line are very important--once we open ourselves up to the world without personal blinders, something good can and will happen, but it is not a matter of will and it cannot be rushed.) We find this joy, of course, by stilling our thoughts after which the flow of peace downwards is unhindered. (The human in the poem is in a very beautiful and calm setting; just let him try to do find pure peace at a bus stop. If he can manage that, he has become a walking Gipfel and needs no further instruction.)
It is important to note that the person at the end of the poem is not at complete peace, but has the promise of peace. Peace has entered his spirit and will not be stopped until unrest cannot challenge it again. We attribute this peace to those rare "individuals" who have transcended their individuality--an exceedingly rare occurrence, if it indeed does occur. But some of us come a good deal closer than others. For most of us, though, this peace is obtained--periodically. (Spiritual development entails decreasing the intervals between episodes of deep peace.) We also attribute this peace to the dead.
Let us imagine that the peace of the summit is represented by light. The canopy of leaves at the top will take their regal share of the light, allowing less to be present at the realm of the birds. The human on the forest floor will receive even less light, which is the best we can get--ours for brief periods, perhaps even for longer ones; it is enough.
A lot is packed into this little poem, a triumph of mellifluous economy. The final "peace" at the end of the poem is often interpreted as death, but that connotation is contained in my interpretation also. For centuries, transcendent peace has been compared to a kind of death--in the best sense of that word--at least by those with a spiritual bent.
Fifty-two years after Goethe carved that poem onto the wall, he returned, at the age of 82, and wept after he read it. He knew what was coming; it arrived six months later. (His last words were reported to be, "Mehr Licht!" that is, "More light!") Very moving, no?

Here's a little footnote regarding a poet of much smaller stature, namely myself. I recently came across the Nachtlied I wrote at the age of nineteen:

Was ist es, was ich versteh'?
Ach, wie schrecklich, ach wie weh
mir ist im ganzen Sinn:
Ich weiss nicht woher,
Ich weiss nicht wohin;
Ich weiss nicht was ich bin.

Thomas Dorsett, 1965

A prose translation: What do I really understand? My whole being feels horror and pain; I don't know where I came from; I don't know where I'm heading; I don't even know what I am.

Did this poet weep, as Goethe did, when he came across one of his first poems, after nearly fifty years? He smiled. He realizes that the questions the poem raises are still unanswered, but the horror and the pain have resolved. (Existential pain, he would say, might be proper for a sensitive young man, but highly improper for a sensitive old one.) The way he resolves his Weltschmerz is by periodically entering the Goethe poem, as it were, and letting the summit do the "talking." He has discovered that once one, having calmed discursive thought, witnesses the splendors of the world, something inexplicably informative happens: summit Silence becomes inner Silence. He--finally! knows that this Silence is golden; golden indeed.

FOR ELINOR SHUI WAN DORSETT AND THOMAS KEEN

My actual niece, not one of
my wife's who are long since
my own, you once brought flowers;
it's about time I repay your bouquet

with a poem--Thanks, Uncle, but your
thank-you verse is late by fifteen years.
No, not so; have I always thanked God
since I first learned in a coldwater flat

that you would enter the world? The answer
which you never heard is a resounding
yes! You are both kin and kind
(what a difference the d makes!) and I predict

a joyful Keen life-- (How do I know it?
Ask worm or whippoorwill, I have connections)--
You will do well. Remain connected,
Shui Wan, although we might not meet again.

PEANUTS, CRUMBS, AND CUMIN

A mouse squeezes into himself to get
behind a wall (the crack is small
between the part that's always dark and
a humming thing in which they keep things cold)

Each with a dollop of imported cheese,
six glue traps are lined against the border
where stove-top meets refrigerator: man's
no-mice-land, which he must cross to get in.

The mouse would rather live in a field, even
where a falling cloud turns out to be a hawk,
but there's none here, God's pidgin' maws
and skyscrapers. Do fellow mammals help?

His very distant cousin went to bed
hoping he'd wake to panicked shrieks--
For six mornings now all he gets
are "cumin seeds"--the rodent's gifts

upon the counter-top. Can't a penthouse
spare overfed cats' and overfed owners'
peanuts with a skinny mouse? Crumbs
keep him alive. This is called charity.

CREDO IN DEUM SED EXPECTO NULLAM?

Even when celebrated by a bored priest,
the mass, I'm told, is beautiful;
its center is sacrifice. Not like
an old man's reluctant giving up
but someone slaughtered in his prime
willingly, for us. So beautiful

it hurts--but doesn't help at all.
After the rite, the priest disrobes,
watches TV. The church is empty;
everyone, unredeemed and dim,
continues to light candles despite
cancer, despite scandals--why not?

Great inner fiction is always real.
Though Alpha and Omega is a myth and
entropy replaces God in the middle--
The latter is a hidden string, while
the former seems to stretch beyond
what even the inner eye sees--

Still, great inner music is realer:
Listening to Missa in Angustiis
by Haydn, I lose myself including
head-doubts, fears and injured faith--
Then that lonely trinity, silence,
entropy and I, return. When will I turn?

ZERO

is a practical abstraction--
Voids happen only in ourselves.
Maharshi had as much as a dead king--

We needed a concept to sum up our sums.
Our depths and debts are very different;
an inch above skyscrapers, almost nothing

doesn't stop real space from seething--
Its lack is Mozart on a cosmic scale;
ours is more traumatic than exploding suns.

How many light-years of Zero does chance need
to make another universe? There you go again,
smug and humming Wittgenstein-deniers,

I repeat: there are no outer voids.
Zero was a practical invention.
Even an intergalactic abyss is

almost empty. Too bad our recent history
comes closer. We have a new word for which space
is too much; there was more compassion between stars.