15 February 2009 | Vol. 8, No. 4

You who never arrived

by 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 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, seperate, in the evening…