Rilke Week

It's Rainer Marie Rilke Week at Chekov's Mistress. Which is great because I love Rilk. Letters to a Young Poet moved me as a young writer and still to this day I can read it each time like its the first. There are so many times in my life when the passages have been able to explain various stages of my journey though life and my journey as a writer.

This poem was posted in her comments section.

THE PANTHER

His vision from the passing of the bars
is grown so weary that it holds nor more.
To him it seems there are a thousand bars
and behind a thousand bars no world.

The padding gait of flexibly strong strides,
that in the very smallest circle turns,
is like a dance of strength around a center
in which stupefied a great will stands.

Only sometimes the curtain of the pupil
soundlessly parts –. Then an image enters,
goes through the tensioned stillness of the limbs –
and in the heart ceases to be.

I almost posted this to m.i.n.e. but I like it more here.