I am none but one of your quite humble,
who looks into life out of a cell,
and who, further from men than things,
does not dare to consider what is done.
But want me face your countenance,
from where your eyes stand out darkly,
then do not regard it as my haughtiness,
by telling you: nobody lives his life.
Coincidences are men, voices, pieces,
dayly lives, fears, many little strokes of luck,
already dressed up when children, muffled,
as masks mature, as faces - dumb.
I often think: treasure houses have to be,
where all these many lives lie about
like tanks or litters or cradles,
into which never a real one climbed,
And like robes, which all by themselves
cannot stand up and in falling snuggle
to strong walls of vaulted stone.
And if all eve I just walk on and on,
out of my garden, inside I am tired,
I know: then all roads lead up
to the arsenal of lifeless things.
There is no tree, as if the land lays down,
and prison-wise hangs down the wall
quite windowless in seven times the ring.
and its gates with the iron bolts,
that stand against those, who are longing there,
and its bars are by the hand of man.
Rainer Maria Rilke |
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