Love Song

 

  How should I hold my soul, so that it does not touch yours?

 How shall I lift it across you to other things?

How gladly I would stow it away with some lost thing in the dark,

 in a strange, quiet place which does not vibrate when your depths vibrate!

But everything that touches us, you and me,

  takes us together like one stroke of the bow,

  which draws one voice out of two strings.

  On what instrument are we stretched?

  And what fiddler has us in his hands?

  Oh, sweet melody.

 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

 

translated by Veronika Fuechtner