Rainer Maria Rilke

Imaginary Life Journey

First a childhood, limitless and without renunciation or goals.
O unselfconscious joy.
Then suddenly terror, barriers, schools, drudgery,and collapse into temptation and loss.
Defiance. The one bent becomes the bender,and thrusts upon others that which it suffered.
Loved, feared, rescuer, fighter, winner and conqueror, blow by blow.
And then alone in cold, light, open space,yet still deep within the mature erected form,a gasping for the clear air of the first one, the old one . . .
Then God leaps out from behind his hiding place.

(Schöneck, September 13, 1923)