Perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us

a poem makes a lovely gift.{thank you}

"You who never arrived 
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost 
from the start, 
I don't even know what songs 
would please you. I have given up trying 
to recognize you in the surging wave of 
the next moment. All the immense 
images in me -- the far-off, deeply-felt landscape, 
cities, towers, and bridges, and un-
suspected turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods--
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house-- , and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me. Streets that I chanced
upon,--
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back
my too-sudden image. Who knows? Perhaps the same
bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening... "
— Rainer Maria Rilke