by Rainer Maria Rilke
I am too alone in the world, and not alone
enough
to make every minute holy.
I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny
enough
just to lie before you like a thing,
shrewd and secretive.
I want my own will, and I want simply to be
with my will,
as it goes toward action,
and in the silent, sometimes hardly moving
times
when something is coming near,
I want to be with those who know secret things
or else alone.
I want to be a mirror for your whole body,
and I never want to be blind, or to be too old
to hold up your old and swaying picture.
I want to unfold.
I don't want to stay folded anywhere,
because where I am folded, there I am a lie.
And I want my grasp of things
true before you. I want to describe myself
like a painting that I looked at
closely for a long time,
like a saying that I finally understood,
like the pitcher I use every day, like the face
of my mother,
like a ship that took me safely
through the wildest storm of all.
from
Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke,
translated by Robert Bly (Harper & Row,
