Green underworld - You who never arrived

You who never arrived

You who never arrived
In my arms, Beloved who were lost
From the start
I don’t even know what songs would please you, I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next
moment. At the immense
images in me--the far-off deeply felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and unsuspected
turns in the path
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods--
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me

You, Beloved who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house--, and almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon,
You had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled,
gave back my too-sudden image. Who know?
Perhaps the same bird echoed both of us
Yesterday, separate, in the evening…
---Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)


This beautiful, beautiful poem finally gave me the initiative to start a story I've long been planning.
god... i love stalkers so much! and I do so love valkyrie profile (the original ps1 one)