In the eyes: dream. The brow as if it could feel <br />something far off. Around the lips, a great <br />freshness--seductive, though there is no smile. <br />Under the rows of ornamental braid <br />on the slim Imperial officer's uniform: <br />the saber's basket-hilt. Both hands stay <br />folded upon it, going nowhere, calm <br />and now almost invisible, as if they <br />were the first to grasp the distance and dissolve. <br />And all the rest so curtained within itself, <br />so cloudy, that I cannot understand <br />this figure as it fades into the background--. <br /> <br />Oh quickly disappearing photograph <br />in my more slowly disappearing hand.<br /><br />Rainer Maria Rilke<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/portrait-of-my-father-as-a-young-man/
