I once tried to explain how some poems or works of art or even places encompass a person, but my words, my talent could never articulate what the heart screamed to share. But this poem does so in full measure.

"Il rumore d'un bacio non e cosi forte come quello del cannone, ma la sua eco dra molti piu lungo"
(the sound of a kiss is not as strong as that of a cannon, but its echo endures much longer")
                                                                                                                                    - Italian Proverb

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 unsuspected 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 . . .

-Rilke

"There are those who possess the deeper recesses of our souls than all others. It is a place none can reach; not because they do not wish to, but because it is a place which does not belong to them, nor is it theirs to ever touch." - Michael Palmer (May 2006)