The Swan

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This laboring through what is still undone,

as though, legs bound, we hobbled along the way,

is like the awkward walking of the swan.

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And dying - to let go, no longer feel

the solid ground we stand on every day -

is like his anxious letting himself fall

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into the water, which receives him gently

and which, as though with reverence and joy,

draws 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.

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~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from New Poems

translated by Stephen Mitchell

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