"To The Sun"

Written by Ingeborg Bachmann
Translated from the German by Peter Filkins

More beautiful than the remarkable moon and its noble light,
More beautiful than the stars, the celebrated orders of night,
Much more beautiful than the firey display of a comet,
And so much more beautiful than any planet,
Because your life and my life depend on it daily, is the sun.

Beautiful sun, which rises, remembering its tasks
And completing them, most beautiful in summer, when a day
Shimmers on the coast and the calm mirror of sails
Passes before your eye, until you tire and eventually doze.

Without the sun, even art puts on a veil again.
You cease to appear to me, and the sea and the sand,
Lashed by shadows, hide beneath my lids.

Beautiful light, which keeps us warm, sustains and marvelously ensures
That i see again, and that I see you again!

Nothing more beautiful under the sun than to be under the sun...

Nothing more beautiful than to see the reed in the water and the bird above
Pondering its flight and, below, the fish in their school,
Colourful, shapely, come into the world on a beam of light,
And to see the circumference, the square of a field, the thousand corners of my land,
And the dress you have put on. Your dress, bell-shaped and blue!

A beautiful blue in which peacocks strut and bow,
The blue of distances, zones of joy with climates for my every mood.
The horizon's blue chance! And my enchanted eyes
Widen again and blink and burn themselves sore.

Beautiful sun, which even from dust deserves the highest praise,
Causing me to raise a cry, not to the moon,
The stars, the night's garish comets that name me a fool,
But rather to you, and ultimately to you alone,
As I lament the inevitable loss of my sight.

When I read this poem today, immediately one of my favourite commercials came to mind. The commercial featured a man running. Running across the city, running along the tracks, stopping nowhere in particular, only to begin running back the same way he had came. That's when the words came up: "What would you do if you knew that one day you couldn't? A message from the M.S. Society of Canada". Really makes you think doesn't it?