POEM FOR THE DAY You who never arrived - Rainer Maria Rilke You who never arrived in my arms, Beloved, who were lost fro...

POEM FOR THE DAY



You who never arrived

- Rainer 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 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 un-

suspected 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...

Hot in Week

Popular

Archive

item