-by Rainer Maria Rilke — New Poems, 1907-1908

His gaze, from moving always past the bars,
has grown so weak that it can grasp
little else. A thousand bars before him
yet beyond the bars, it seems, no world.

As he paces in tightened circles, over and again,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly—.  An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart, and disappears.
*
-a new translation by j. petroshius