.
How shall I hold my soul, that it may not
be touching yours? How shall I lift it then
above you to where other things are waiting?
Ah, gladly would I lodge it, all-forgot,
with some lost thing the dark is isolating
on some remote and silent spot that, when
your depths vibrate, is not itself vibrating.
You and me - all that lights upon us, though,
brings us together like a fiddle -bow
drawing one voice from two strings it glides along.
Across what instrument have we been spanned?
And what violinist holds us in his hand?
O sweetest song.
.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
March 1907, Capri
translated by J. B. Leishman
art by klimt
art by klimt
.