You Who Never Arrived |
By Rainier Maria Rilke |
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 give 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 chance 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… |