Loneliness

By Rainer Maria Rilke

Being apart and lonely is like rain.

It climbs toward evening from the ocean plains;

from flat places, rolling and remote, it climbs

to heaven, which is its old abode.

And only when leaving heaven drops upon the city.

It rains down on us in those twittering

hours when the streets turn their faces to the dawn,

and when two bodies who have found nothing,

dissapointed and depressed, roll over;

and when two people who despise each other

have to sleep together in one bed-

that is when loneliness receives the rivers…