Sonnets To Orpheus I, 5

Erect no monument. Just let the roses blossom every year as his reward. For that is Orpheus. His metamorphoses to this and that. We shouldn't strive too hard to find another name. Once and for all it's Orpheus if there's song. He comes and goes. Isn't it enough that sometimes he'll survive a few days longer than the rose? And though he also worries at his passing, he has to fade, for you to understand! For when his word expands beyond existence, he is already, where you can't go with him. The lyre's bars do not constrain his hands. And he obeys the best, when he's trespassing.

Errichtet keinen Denkstein. Laßt die Rose nur jedes Jahr zu seinen Gunsten blühn. Denn Orpheus ists. Seine Metamorphose in dem und dem. Wir sollen uns nicht mühn um andre Namen. Ein für alle Male ists Orpheus, wenn es singt. Er kommt und geht. Ists nicht schon viel, wenn er die Rosenschale um ein paar Tage manchmal übersteht? O wie er schwinden muß, daß ihrs begrifft! Und wenn ihm selbst auch bangte, daß er schwände. Indem sein Wort das Hiersein übertrifft, ist er schon dort, wohin ihrs nicht begleitet. Der Leier Gitter zwängt ihm nicht die Hände. Und er gehorcht, indem er überschreitet.

Translation notes:

Songs are transient, and Orpheus, as the incarnation of song itself, is transient as well. Therefore he cannot be honored by anything solid and unchanging, but only by things which change, transform, bloom and fade, come and go. Which are perishable as a bowl of roses. This idea returns in full force in II,12, and is a constant theme running through most of part II.

Line 6: "kommt und geht"

Presages the opening line "O komm und geh" of II,28.

Line 7: "die Rosenschale"

"the bowl of roses" - a low wide bowl full of water, on which picked rose blossoms are floated.

Line 13: "Der Leier Gitter"

"Gitter" here refers to the lyre's strings, but it can also mean the bars of a jail cell. (Both are arrays of parallel cylinders.) I chose "bars" in order to keep this double meaning, which seems important relative to "zwängt"/"constrain". Other approaches are possible; for example, it might work to do something like "The lyre's strings do not tie down his hands", which uses the more natural translation of "Gitter" but still maintains a clear connection between the object (strings) and the form of constraint it could impose.