Du im Voraus -- Rilke translation

By Tracy

This poem is already well-known in English translation, so I am adding my version to the many. It reminds me in some ways of Emily Dickinson's "A Loss of Something Ever Felt I", which David Musselwhite once said to me was the ultimate "lost object" poem.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Du im Voraus

You, my beloved lost in advance, my never-appeared,

I don’t know which notes you prefer.
I no longer try, when what’s coming billows over me,

to recognise you. All the great

images in me, scenery learned at a distance:

towns and spires and bridges and un-

suspected turns in the roads

and the immensity of those countries

once traversed by gods:

grows to its meaning in me,

your meaning, elusive one.

Oh, the gardens you are,

oh, I saw them with such

hope. An open window

in a country house — and you nearly

stepped toward me, thoughtful. Alleys I found —

you had just gone along them,

and sometimes the shopkeepers’ mirrors

were still dizzy with you, and gave out, afraid,

my too-sudden image. — Who knows if the same

bird did not ring out through us

yesterday, separately, in the evening?

                                                    trans. Tracy Ryan