Stale dull days,
I can tell the storms are coming
by the trees that rap
against the worried window-panes
and I hear the sound
of distant things,
saying that which:
I cannot bear without a friend,
cannot love without a sister.
The storm transforms,
reshaping as it blows
through the forest,
through time,
leaving everything ageless:
the landscape,
like a verse in the holy psalms,
serious, forceful
and eternal.
How little is that which we contest,
what wrestles with us, how great!
if we would let ourselves
be conquered,
by the great storm
(as do other things),
we too might become
immense,
vast and nameless.
What we defeat is so tiny,
and the success makes us small,
the eternal and extraordinary
will not be bent by us.
Think of the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
His adversary's sinews were stretched,
and strengthened (like steel) by the battle and
were plucked by His fingers
like strings, deep melodies.
That man, whom the Angel honours in
deigning to fight,
was vanquished,
yet he strides forth proud,
made strong
by the hard hand
that carved him.
Victories do not tempt him:
that man grows only
by being beaten,
in resounding defeat
against ever greater things.
Der Schauende, from The Book of Images by Rainer Maria Rilke. Translation by me.
Thanks to Andrew Garfield for bringing this to people's attention in his beautiful reading of the version titled The Man Watching, by Robert Bly and for his reading of Learning to Measure Time in Love and Loss by Chris Huntington:
