The Solitary
No: my heart shall be a tower,
and I myself set at its highest rim:
where nothing else exists, once again pain
and the unsayable, once again world.
Still one thing alone in immensity,
growing dark then light again,
still one last face full of longing
thrust out into the unappeasable,
still one uttermost face made of stone
heeding only its own inner gravity,
while the distances that silently destroy it
drive it on to an ever deeper bliss.
Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Edward Snow