Love Song

by Rainer Maria Rilke


How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws one voice out of two separate strings.
Upon which instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.

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This could be the single greatest poem that I have ever read.