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Duino Elegies – Rainer Maria Rilke [The Second Elegy]

Lovers, each satisfied in the other,
I ask you about us.
You grasp yourselves.
Have you a sign?
Look, it happens to me, that at times my hands
become aware of each other, or that my worn face
hides itself in them.
That gives me a slight sensation.
But who would dare to exist only for that?
You, though, who grow in the other’s delight
until, overwhelmed, they beg:
‘No more’ -: you, who under your hands
grow richer like vintage years of the vine:
who sometimes vanish, because the other
has so gained the ascendancy:
I ask you of us.
I know you touch so blissfully because the caress withholds,
because the place you cover so tenderly
does not disappear:
because beneath it you feel pure duration.
So that you promise eternity almost, from the embrace.
And yet, when you’ve endured
the first terrible glances, and the yearning at windows,
and the first walk together, just once, through the garden:
Lovers, are you the same?
When you raise yourselves
one to another’s mouth, and hang there – sip against sip:
O, how strangely the drinker then escapes from their action.