A swan moves over the water,
surrounded by itself
like a gliding tableau.
Thus the beloved
is sometimes
a moving space.
He draws near, duplicated
like the swimming swan,
to our troubled soul
which adds to
the trembling image
of joy and doubt.

…

Un cygne avance sur l’eau
tout entouré de lui-même,
comme un glissant tableau;
ainsi à certains instants
un être que l’on aime
est tout un espace mouvant.
Il se rapproche, doublé,
comme ce cygne qui nage,
sur notre âme troublée…
qui à cet être ajoute
la tremblante image
de bonheur et de doute.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), a German poet, an emblematic figure of human nobility, is the author of the Duineser Elegien (The Duino Elegies), Die Sonette an Orpheus (The Sonnets to Orpheus), and Briefe an Einen Jungen Dichter (Letters to a Young Poet). Towards the end of his life he also composed poems in French such as this one above without a title.