I Can Still Carry You With My Blood

Extinguish my sight, and I can still see you.
Plug up my ears, and I can still hear.
Even without feet I can walk toward you,
and without mouth I can still implore.
Break off my arms, and I will hold you
with my heart as if it were a hand.
Strangle my heart, and my brain will still throb.
And should you set fire to my brain,
I still can carry you with my blood.
(from "The Book of Hours")

Already my gaze is upon the hill, the sunny one,
at the end of the path which I've only just begun.
So we are grasped, by that which we could not grasp,
at such great distance, so fully manifest—
and it changes us, even when we do not reach it,
into something that, hardly sensing it, we already are.
A sign appears, echoing our own sign...
But what we sense is the falling winds.
(from "A Walk")

--Rainer Maria Rilke (1875--1926)