51茶馆

听

听

You, neighbor God, if sometimes in the night I rouse you with loud knocking, I do so only because I seldom hear you breathe;
and I know: you are alone.
And should you need a drink, no one is
there to reach it to you, groping in the dark.
Always I hearken.
Give but a small sign.
I am quite near.
Between us there is but a narrow wall, and
by sheer chance;
for it would take merely a call from your lips or from mine to break it down,
and that without a sound.
The wall is builded of your images.
They stand before you hiding you like names.
And when the light with me blazes high that in my inmost soul I know you by, the radiance
is squandered on their frames.
And then my senses, which too soon grow lame, exiled from you, must go their homeless ways.

Rainer Maria Rilke