[clownassassin]

The Panther by Rilke

I believe he wrote this while at the zoo. This is from memory and translated from German(?)

From seeing the bars, his seeing is so exhausted that it no longer holds anything anymore. For him the world is bars, a thousand bars and beyond the bars nothing.

The lythe swinging of his rythmical easy stride which circles down to the tiniest hub, is like a dance of energy in which a great will stands stunned and numb.

Only at times to the curtains of the pupils rise without a sound. A shape enters, slips past the tightened silence of the shoulders, reaches the heart and dies.