The Man
Watching
By
Rainer Maria Rilke
I can tell by the way the
trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my
worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields
say things
I can't bear without a friend,
I can't love without a sister.
The storm, the shifter of
shapes, drives on
across the woods and across
time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape, like a line
in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight
and eternity.
What we choose to fight is
so tiny!
What fights with us is so
great.
If only we would let ourselves
be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too,
and not need names.
When we win it's with small
things,
and the triumph itself makes
us small.
What is extraordinary and
eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestlers' sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.
Whoever was beaten by this
Angel
(who often simply declined
the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh
hand,
that kneaded him as if to
change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that
man.
This is how he grows: by
being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.
--Translated by Robert Bly