heavy stones of grief
“I told you once I should pass out of your kindness into your patience, as from one room to another, as though I could go where I liked and lay my face in the flowers you have left and pass my hand over the silk of your dear feelings. But I shall never be abel to tell you what you have done for me. God alone should give word to all gardens to tell you of it in their own blessed way; the stars, when you look up to them, should lay it, all heavenly and pure, in your heart. Do you know that? But what have I done? I have piled the heavy stones of my grief upon your joy, I have set my failing, withering life beside your confident hope and disappointed it, I have taken your flowers in my hand and they are faded. I thought I could give you my life, but my life is forfeit and has turned to your hurt. Can you forgive it all?”
I saw him turn, saw his beloved face in front of me and laid my head on his shoulder.
“Rainer,” I said, shaken with sobs, “you must know how deeply and endlessly I thank you for everything, even the bitterest, because you let me have a share in all that moved your heart, in all the brightness and the blackness. Don’t you feel that? Have I been unable to show it, that you can doubt it?”
Rilke and Benvenuta,
Magda von Hattingberg, p. 138
