It's been ages since I posted a poem, and I couldn't go past this one. Many, many thanks to Carly for drawing my attention to Rainer Maria Rilke in general and this poem in particular.
* * *
Once I took your face into
my hands. Moonlight fell on it.
Most incomprehensible object
under overflowing tears.
Like something docile, that quietly endures,
it felt almost the way a thing feels.
And yet there was no being in that chill
night, which endlessly eludes me.
O these places toward which we surge,
pushing into the scant surfaces
all the waves of our heart,
our pleasures and our weaknesses,
and to whom do we finally hold them out?
To the stranger, who misunderstood us,
to the other, whom we never found,
to those slaves, who bound us,
to the spring winds, which promptly vanished,
and to silence, that spendthrift.
Rainer Maria Rilke, 1913