Wie soll ich meine Seele halten, daß sie nicht an deine rührt? Wie soll ich sie hinheben über dich zu andern Dingen? Ach gerne möchte ich sie bei irg… - Rainer Maria Rilke

The next tide will erase the way through the mudflats, and everything will be again equal on all sides; but the small, far-out island already has its eyes closed; bewildered, the dike draws a circle around its inhabitants who were born into a sleep in which many worlds are silently confused, for they rarely speak, and every phrase is like an epitaph.

Yes—the springtimes needed you. Often a star was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past, or as you walked under an open window, a violin yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission. But could you accomplish it? Weren't you always distracted by expectation, as if every event announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you going and coming and often staying all night.)

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur: would not, from all the borders of itself, burst like a star: for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.