Two Solitudes Protecting Each Other

 Rilke, by Gerolf Van de Perre

The experience of loving, that now disappoints so many, can actually change and be transformed from the ground up into the building of a relationship between two human beings, not just a man and a woman. And this more authentic love will be evident in the utterly considerate, gentle, and clear manner of its binding and releasing. It will resemble what we now struggle to prepare: the love that consists of two solitudes which border, protect, and greet each other.

Rome, May 14, 1904

Letters to a Young Poet

You Come and Go

Rilke by a Window, by Gerolf Van de Perre

You come and go. The doors swing closed
ever more gently, almost without a shudder.
Of all who move through the quiet houses,
you are the quietest.

We become so accustomed to you,
we no longer look up
when your shadow falls over the book we are reading
and makes it glow.

From The Book of Hours I, 45