novembre

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[TO LOU ANDREAS-SALOME]

I

I kept myself too open, I forgot
that outside there are not just Things, not just
animals at home within themselves,
whose eyes do not reach out from their life's roundness
differently than a picture from its frame;
that all along I snatched into myself
glances, opinion, curiosity.
For all we know, eyes may appear in space,
staring down. Only when hurled in you
is my face not imperiled, as it grows
into you, as it continues darkly
forever onward within your sheltered heart.

II

As one would hold a handkerchief in front of
one's piled-up breath...no: as one would press it
against a wound from which life, all in one spurt,
is trying to escape--I held you close
till you were red with me. Who can describe
what happened to us? We made up for all
that there had been no time for. I ripened strangely
in every impulse of my unlived youth,
and you, Beloved, found yourself beginning
a kind of savage childhood in my heart.

III

Remembering them will not suffice: there must,
from all those moments, still remain a pure
existence in my depths, the sediment
from a measurelessly overfilled solution.
For I am not recalling: what I am
moves me because of you. It's not that I
discover you at the sad, cooled-off places
you left; the very fact that you're not there
is warm with you and realer and is more
than a privation. Yearning ends so often
in vagueness. Why should I be desperate while
your presence still can fall upon me, gently
as moonlight on a seat beside the window.

Rainer Maria Rilke

12:21 am - 04.18.11

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