Be Ahead of All Parting

oil on canvas 25" x 35" 1993 Private Collection

Be Ahead of All Parting
from Sonnets to Orpheus II, 13
by Rainer Marie Rilke
( translation: Stephen Mitchell )

Be Ahead of All Parting, as though it already were
Behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
That only by wintering through it will your heart survive.