Woman In Love
That is my window. Just now
I have so softly wakened.
I thought that I would float.
How far does my life reach,
and where does the night begin
I could think that everything
was still me all around;
transparent like a crystal's
depths, darkened, mute.
I could keep even the stars
within me; so immense
my heart seems to me; so willingly
it let him go again.
whom I began perhaps to love, perhaps to hold.
Like something strange, undreamt-of,
my fate now gazes at me.
For what, then, am I stretched out
beneath this endlessness,
exuding fragrance like a meadow,
swayed this way and that,
calling out and frightened
that someone will hear the call,
and destined to disappear
inside some other life.
Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke
