back to Rainer Maria Rilke

“Loneliness” by Rainer Maria Rilke 🇦🇹 (4 Dec 187529 Dec 1926)
Translated from the German by Robert Bly
Being apart and lonely is like rain.
It climbs toward evening from the ocean plains;
from flat places, rolling and remote, it climbs
to heaven, which is its old abode.
And only when leaving heaven drops upon the city.
It rains down on us in those twittering
hours when the streets turn their faces to the dawn,
and when two bodies who have found nothing,
dissapointed and depressed, roll over;
and when two people who despise eachother
have to sleep together in one bed—
that is when loneliness receives the rivers …