In the
eyes:
dream. The
brow as if it could feel
something far off. Around the
lips, a great
freshness--seductive, though there is no smile.
Under the rows of ornamental
braid
on the slim
Imperial officer's uniform:
the
saber's
basket-hilt. Both hands stay
folded upon it, going nowhere, calm
and now almost
invisible, as if they
were the first to grasp the distance and dissolve.
And all the rest so curtained within itself,
so cloudy, that I cannot understand
this figure as it fades into the
background--.
Oh quickly disappearing photograph
in my more slowly disappearing hand.
--Rainer Maria Rilke