Sometimes, somewhere, it had set him free,
that jerk with which you flung yourself in youth
full upon greatness, far from all respect.
Then he grew willing: and since then a servant,
after each service waiting for his freedom.
Half-domineering, half almost ashamed,
you make excuses, that for this and this
you still require him, and insist, alas!
how you have helped him. Though you feel yourself
how everything detained by his detention
is missing from the air. Sweet and seductive,
to let him go, and then, abjuring magic,
entering into destiny like others,
to know that henceforth his most gentle friendship,
without all tension, nowhere bound by duty,
a something added to the space we breathe,
is busied heedless in the element.
Dependent now, having no more the gift
to form the dull mouth to that conjuration
that brought him headlong. Powerless, ageing, poor,
yet breathing him, incomprehensibly
far-scattered fragrance, make the Invisible
at last complete. Smiling, to think you’d been
on nodding terms with that, such great acquaintance
so soon familiar. Perhaps weeping, too,
when you remember how it loved you and
would yet be going, always both at once.
(And there I left it? Now he terrifies me,
this man who’s duke again. – The way he draws
the wire into his head, and hangs himself
beside the other puppets, and henceforth
begs mercy of the play! … What epilogue
of achieved mastery! Putting off, standing there
with only one’s own strength: ‘which is most faint’.)