Costa Rican Kitty Cat
His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else.
It seems to him there are a thousand bars;
and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
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 is gone.
"The Panther" by Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Stephen Mitchell