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, separate, in the evening... 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke