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Rainer Maria Rilke - Solitude

Solitude is like a rain.
It rises from the sea to meet the evening;
it rises from the dim, far-distant plain
toward the sky, as by an old birthright.
And thence falls on the city from the height.

It falls like rain in that gray doubtful hour
when all the streets are turning toward the dawn,
and when those bodies, with all hope foregone
of what they sought, are sorrowfully alone;
and when all men, who hate each other, creep
together in one common bed for sleep;

then solitude flows onward with the rivers . . .

THE ANGELS

THEY all have weary mouths,
bright souls without a seam.
And a yearning (as for sin)
often haunts their dream.

They wander, each and each alike,
in God's garden silently,
as many, many intervals
in his might and melody.

Only when they spread their wings
they waken a great wind through the land:
as though with his broad sculptor-hands
God was turning
the leaves of the dark book of the Beginning.