you are the poor one

You are the poor one, you the destitute.

You are the stone that has no resting place.

You are the diseased one

whom we fear to touch.

Only the wind is yours.

You are poor like the spring rain

that gently caresses the city;

like wishes muttered in a prison cell, without a world to hold them;

and like the invalid, turning in his bed to ease the pain.

Like flowers along the track, shuddering

as the train roars by, and like the hand

that covers our face when we cry - that poor.

Yours is the suffering of birds on freezing nights,

of dogs who go hungry for days.

Yours the long sad waiting of animals

who are locked up and forgotten.

You are the beggar who averts his face,

the homeless person who has given up asking;

you howl in the storm.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Book of Poverty and Death, III,18

photo by Fran Khorvat