Rainer Marie Rilke "YOU WHO NEVER ARRIVED"
You who never arrived in my arms,
Beloved, who were lost rom 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 god
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 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 . . .
Beloved, who were lost rom 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 god
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 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 . . .