The Night Must Fall

I'd often stand at the window
stand and stare at you.
It all seemed to warm me off,
the strange city, whose unconfiding landscape
gloomed as though I didn't exist.
The nearest thing didn't mind if I misunderstood them.
The street would thrust itself up to the lamp,
and I'd see it was strange.

A sympathisable room up there, revealed in the lamp light:
I'd begin to share, they'd notice and close the shutters.
I'd stand.
A child would cry, and I'd know the mothers in the houses,
what they availed,
and I'd know as well the inconsolable grounds of
infinite crying.
Or else a voice would sing, and what was expected
be just a little surpassed;
or an old man coughed below,
full of reproach, as if his body were in the right
against a gentler world.
Or else, when an hour was striking,
I'd begin to count too late and let it escape me.
As a strange little boy, when at last they invite him to join them,
cannot catch the ball, and is quite unable
to share the game the rest are so easily playing,
but stands and gazes- whither?
I'd stand and all at once
realise you were being friends with me, playing with me,grown up
Night, and I'd gaze at you.
While towers were raging, and while, with its hidden fate,
a city stood around me and undivinable mountains
camped against me and Strangeness, in narrowing circles,
hungrily prowled round my casual flares of perception:
then, lofty Night,
you were not ashamed to recognize me.
Your breathing went over me; your smile upon all that
spacious consequence passed into me.

Rilke