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substituteTHE PANTHER
Jardin des Plantes, Paris
The bars go by, and watching them his sight
grows tired and fails to grasp what eyes are for.
There are a thousand bars, it seems to him;
behind the thousand bars there’s nothing more.
The supple gait of swift and powerful steps
pacing out its circle on the ground
is like a dance of strength around a center
in which a great bewildered mind is bound.
Yet now and then the curtain of the pupil
silently parts: a picture goes inside,
slips through the tightened limbs, and in the heart
ceases to be, like something that has died.
--Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by my father from the German in 1967, overnight, after a request from a colleague.
Jardin des Plantes, Paris
The bars go by, and watching them his sight
grows tired and fails to grasp what eyes are for.
There are a thousand bars, it seems to him;
behind the thousand bars there’s nothing more.
The supple gait of swift and powerful steps
pacing out its circle on the ground
is like a dance of strength around a center
in which a great bewildered mind is bound.
Yet now and then the curtain of the pupil
silently parts: a picture goes inside,
slips through the tightened limbs, and in the heart
ceases to be, like something that has died.
--Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by my father from the German in 1967, overnight, after a request from a colleague.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-02 08:32 pm (UTC)Thank you.