From Rainer Maria Rilke
translation by Dr. Barton P. Odom
From going through the bars, his gaze has become
so exhausted
that it holds nothing anymore.
To him it is as if there are a thousand bars,
and beyond the thousand bars, no world.
The easy swinging of that lithe, potent stride,
which turns in on itself in ever-smaller circles,
is like a dance of power around a center
in which a great will stands benumbed.
Only at times the curtain of the pupils
rises silently--then an image goes in,
goes though the tightened stillness of the limbs,
enters the heart and is no more.
