Maybe the birds
will feel in their flight
how the air has expanded.
Can you see? Springtimes have needed you.
And there are stars expecting you to notice them.
From out of the past, a wave rises to meet you
the way the strains of a violin
come through an open window
as you pass by.
As if it were all by design.
But are you the one designing it?
Were you not always distracted by yearning,
as though some lover were about to appear?
Let yourself feel it, that yearning.
It connects you with those
who have sung it through the ages,
sung especially of love unrequited.
Shouldn't this oldest of sufferings
finally bear fruit for us?
Is it not time
to free ourselves from the beloved
even as we, trembling, endure the loving?
As the arrow endures the bowstring's tension,
so that, released, it travel farther.
For there is nowhere to remain.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
from the first of Duino Elegies