ART OF EUROPE

Rainer Maria Rilke - Death of the Beloved

He only knew of death what all men say:
that those it takes it thrusts into dumb night.
When she herself, though - no, not snatched away,
but tenderly unloosened from his sight,

had glided over to the unknown shades,
and when he felt that he had now resigned
the moonlight of her laughter to their glades,
and all her ways of being kind:

then all at once he came to understand
the dead through her, and joined them in their walk,
kin to them all; he let the others talk,

and paid no heed to them; and called that land
the fortunately-placed, the ever-sweet. -
And groped out all its pathways for her feet.