Anastasia

“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.)…”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies

“Oh, love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.”
― Hermann Hesse, Wer lieben kann, ist glücklich. Über die Liebe

“For our part, when we feel, we
evaporate; ah, we breathe
ourselves out and away; with each new
heartfire
we give off a fainter scent. True,
someone may tell us:
you're in my blood, this room, Spring
itself
is filled with you . . . To what end?
He can't hold us,
we vanish within him and around him.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies

“Look: the trees exist; the houses
we dwell in stand there stalwartly.
Only we
pass by it all, like a rush of air.
And everything conspires to keep quiet
about us,
half out of shame perhaps, half out of
some secret hope.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies