Rainer Maria Rilke: "A Walk"

My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has its inner light, even from a distance—

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,

we already are; a gesture waves us on,

answering our own wave…
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

"A Walk" by Rainer Maria Rilke, from Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Bly. © Harper Perennial, 1981.

Photography credit: "Hilly Road," by Joseph Austin (originally color).