yet small and white and nothing more than this

How I have felt the shape that "farewell" takes.
How I know it yet: a dark unvanquished
cruel something, by which a tender coalescence
is once more shown and held and torn apart.

How exposed I was, gazing on at that
which, as it, calling me, released its hold,
stayed behind, as if it were every woman
yet small and white and nothing more than this:

a waving, already no longer linked to me,
a something faintly waving on--, already scarcely
explainable any more: perhaps a plum branch
from which a cuckoo has hastily flown away.

[Rainer Maria Rilke {1875-1926} 'Farewell' from New Poems {1907}]