lament, poem by Rilke

Lament

Everything is farand long gone by.

I think that the star

glittering above me

has been dead for a million years.

I think there were tears

in the car I heard pass

and something terrible was said.

A clock has stopped striking in the house

across the road...When did it start?...

I would like to step out of my heart

and go walking beneath the enormous sky.

I would like to pray.

And surely of all the stars that perished

long ago,one still exists.

I think that I know

which one it is--which one,

at the end of its beam in the sky,

stands like a white city...

Rainer Maria Rilke

-1902 or sometime around then