BRIGHTFULLMOON

Paris, end of 1913

…

O those places that we surge toward,
thrusting into their scant surfaces
all the waves of our heart,
our pleasures and weaknesses,
and to whom finally do we hold them out?

To the stranger, who misunderstood us,
to the other, whom we never found,
to those slaves, who held us captive,
to the Spring winds, which promptly vanished,
and to that spendthrift, silence.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, in Uncollected Poems, translated by E. Snow (via growing-orbits)