Love Song

"Love Song" is a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke. Here's the complete text of this work of poetry.

Love Song

How can I keep my soul in me,
so that it doesn't touch your soul?
How can I raise it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws one voice out of two separate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.