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“The Swan” by Rainer Maria Rilke 🇦🇹 (4 Dec 187529 Dec 1926)
Translated from the German by Stephen Mitchell
This laboring through what is still undone,
as though, legs bound, we hobbled along the way,
is like the akward walking of the swan.
And dying—to let go, no longer feel
the solid ground we stand on every day—
is like anxious letting himself fall
into waters, which receive him gently
and which, as though with reverence and joy,
draw back past him in streams on either side;
while, infinitely silent and aware,
in his full majesty and ever more
indifferent, he condescends to glide.