The Blind Man's Song by Rainer Maria Rilke

I'm blind, all of you out there; that's a curse,
a repulsive something, a contradiction,
a daily heavy burden.
I lay my hand on the arm of a woman,
my grey hand on her greyest grey,
and she guides me through nothing but more emptiness.

You push and pull and imagine yourselves
to sound differently than just stone against stone,
but you are wrong: only I
live and suffer and complain.
In me is an endless scream,
and I can't say, is it my
heart that screams or my bowels.

Do you recognize the songs? You don't sing them,
not quite in this arrangement.
Each day for you brings new light,
warm through the open window.
And you have this sense of moving from face to face,
and that tempts one to be forgiving.