You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
I don't even know what songs
would please you.
I don't even know.
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....
Rainer Maria Rilke, from Ahead of All Parting
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCE74TFlnoM
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