You who never arrived in my arms,
Beloved, who were lost from the start,
I don't even know what songs would please you.
I have given up trying to recognize you
in the surging wave of the next moment.
All the immense images in me--
the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges,
and unsuspected turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods-
all rise within me to mean you,
who forever elude me.
You, Beloved,
who are all the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing.
An open window in a country house--,
and you almost stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon--,
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop,
the mirrors were still dizzy with your presence and,
startled, gave back my too-sudden image.
Who knows?
perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us yesterday,
separate,
in the evening..
~Rilke
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