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Response to looking for a poem...

from ilza (ilza@pobox.com)
You who never arrived

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...

--Rainer Maria Rilke

(posted 8863 days ago)

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