Had I not been reading page 346 of my Penguin trade paperback Gravity's Rainbow, I would never have learned that O, wie spurlos zerträte ein Engel den Trostmarkt is from the tenth Dueno Elegy, and, as if that weren't enough, that I do not like the translation that everybody reads, either, because the guy botches its first three words.
So I spent the next howeverlong translating the first three sentences:
That I this one day, upon the final exit of the most furious insight,
sing out Jubilation and Glory to upward-voiced angels.
That from the clear striking of the collective hearts' hammers
none fail to yield, none doubt, none play their strings
too quickly. That my face, shiny with tears, makes me
more brilliant; that the inconspicuous crying need
blossoms.
–LBJ, translating Rilke, 6/2007