Loneliness (Einsamkeit)

Being apart and lonely is like rain.
It climbs toward evening from the ocean plains;
from flat places, rolling and remote, it climbs
to heaven, which is its old abode.
And only when leaving heaven drops upon the city.

It rains down on us in those twittering
hours when the streets turn their faces to the dawn,
and when two bodies who have found nothing,
disappointed and depressed, roll over;
and when two people who despise each other
have to sleep together in one bed -

that is when loneliness receives the rivers...

poem by Rainer Maria Rilke from Das Buch der Bilder (21 September 1902), translated by Robert Bly
Added by anonym
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