Parting

Rainer Maria Rilke - Austria

How I have felt that thing that's called 'to part',

and feel it still: a dark, invincible

cruel something by which what was joined so well

is once more shown, held out, and torn apart.

In what defenceless gaze at that I've stood,

which, as it, calling to me, let me go,

stayed there, as though it were all womanhood,

yet small and white and nothing more than, oh,

a waving, now already unrelated

to me, a slight, continuing wave, - scarce now

explainable: perhaps a plum-tree bough

some perching cuckoo's hastily vacated.