Der Panther [English translation]

The Panther

In the Jardin des Plantes, Paris

His sight from ever gazing through the bars

has grown so blunt that it sees nothing more.

It seerms to him that thousand of bars are

before him, and behind him nothing merely.

The easy motion of his supple stride,

which turns about the very smallest circle,

is like a dance of strength about a center

in which a will stands stupefied.

Only sometimes when the pupil's film

soundlessly opens . . . then one image fills

and glides through the quiet tension of the limbs

into the heart and ceases and is still.

• Artist:Rainer Maria Rilke