Solitude // Einsamkeit

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Solitude is like rain.

It ascends from the sea across evenings;

from plains, which are far away and remote,

swells to the sky, where it always has.

And first from the sky, it falls on the city.

It rains downward in the liminal hours,

when all paths wind around toward morning

and when the beloveds, who discovered nothing,

depart from one another disappointed and sorrowful;

and when the people, who hate one another,

must sleep together in one bed:

then the solitude flows with the rivers ...

[trans A. Badagnani]