suddenly i know so much about fountains,

these incomprehensible trees of glass,

i could speak as though of my own tears,

which i, gripped by such fantastic dreaming,

once spent lavishly and then forgot.

could i forget that heavens reach hands

toward many things and into this commotion?

did i not always see unrivaled greatness

in the ascent of old parks before the soft

expectant evenings, in pale songs

that arose from unknown girls

and overflowed the melody

and grew real and seemed they must be

mirrored in the opened ponds?

i must only remember all those times

that fountains came alive in me, -

then i, too, feel the weight of the plunge,

to which i glimpsed again the waters,

and know of branches that bent downward,

of voices that burned with small flames,

of ponds that, feeble-minded and shunted off, only repeated their sharp-edged banks;

of evening skies, that from charred western forests

shrank back totally bewildered,

arched differently, darkened, and acted

as though this were not the world they had supposed...

--rainer maria rilke