The  Man  Watching

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 feel 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 like long metal strings,

he felt them under his fingers

like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by his 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.

This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively

By constantly greater beings.

Rainer Maria Rilke   translated  by  Robert Bly