When he, the Distinctly Beautiful Half Mourner Knows His Fate:Behind the Blameless Trees-Rilke

Behind the Blameless Trees

old fate slowly builds
her mute countenance.
Wrinkles grow there . . .
What a bird shrieks here
springs there like a gasp of warning
from a soothsayer’s hard mouth.

And the soon-to-be lovers
smile on each other, not yet knowing farewell,
and round about them, like a constellation,
their destiny casts
its nightly spell.
Still to come, it does not reach out to them,
it remains
a phantom
floating in its heavenly course.