Portrait of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
Artist: Leonid Osipovich Pasternak (1862-1945)
Solitude
Rainer Maria Rilke
Solitude is like a rain.
It rises from the sea toward evening;
from plains, which are distant and remote,
it goes to the sky, which always has it.
And only then it falls from the sky on the city.
It rains down in the in-between hours,
when all the crooked streets turn toward morning,
and when the bodies, which found nothing,
leave each other feeling sad and disappointed;
and when the people, who hate each other,
have to sleep together in one bed:
then solitude flows with the rivers . . .
SW COSGROVE 