\"You Who Never Arrived\" poem 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 but deeply-felt --
landscape,
cities,
towers,
and bridges.
The 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.
Who knows?
perhaps the same bird echoed
through both of us
yesterday,
separate,
in the evening ...
