A Poet Reflects

But we, while we are intent upon one object,
already feel the pull of another.  Conflict
is second nature to us.  Aren’t lovers
always arriving at each other’s boundaries?—
although they promised vastness, hunting, home.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, from “The Fourth Elegy” in Duino Elegies & The Sonnets of Orpheus (Vintage International, Bilingual Edition, 2009), edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell