SECRET FIDELITY by Rainer Marie Rilke

In this life of neglect, is there anything desired by those that have never understood how all things support, answer and attract each other in an infinite exchange?   Since childhood however, I have admired how, in this open world, no sustained glance, no smile, not one tenderness is lost.   All comes back to us, if it isn’t stopped, each heart, According to its own rhythm, Will run the whole course, the complete tender round, of its secret fidelity.

—trans by A. Poulin, Jr. The Complete French Poems of Rainer Marie Rilke p.281