| Du im Voraus verlorne Geliebte, Nimmergekommene, nicht weiß ich, welche Töne dir lieb sind. Nicht mehr versuch ich, dich, wenn das Kommende wogt, zu erkennen. Alle die großen Bildern in mir, im Fernen erfahrene Landschaft, Städte und Türme und Brücken und un- vermutete Wendung der Wege und das Gewaltige jener von Göttern einst durchwachsenen Länder: steigt zur Bedeutung in mir deiner, Entgehende, an.Ach, die Gärten bist du, ach, ich sah sie mit solcher Hoffnung. Ein offenes Fenster im Landhaus—, und du tratest beinahe mir nachdenklich heran. Gassen fand ich,— du warst sie gerade gegangen, und die spiegel manchmal der Läden der Händler waren noch schwindlich von dir und gaben erschrocken mein zu plötzliches Bild.—Wer weiß, ob derselbe Vogel nicht hinklang durch uns gestern, einzeln, im Abend? |
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… |
About the poem: You Who Never Arrived is a poem of Rilke that is based upon his personal view that a man never finds his one true love in his lifetime. He talks about his Beloved who is within him, but constantly eludes him. Despite his longing for her, he has accepted the fact that he will never find her. In the conclusion of the poem he says that he knows that his Beloved is out there, somewhere looking for him just the way he is looking for her. But, every time fate intercepts in such a manner that every time they come tantalisingly close to each other, he loses her.