Rilke's Panther Poem

Animal artists at the Jardin des Plantes, Paris. From the magazine "L'Illustration", 7 August 1902.

 

Rainer Maria Rilke's poem "The Panther" describes the plight of a big cat living in the cage of a zoo:

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.

- English translation by Stephen Mitchell