THE PANTHER Jardin des Plantes, Paris The bars go by, and watching them his sight grows tired and fails to grasp what eyes are for. There are a thousand bars, it seems to him; behind the thousand bars there’s nothing more. The supple gait of swift and powerful steps pacing out its circle on the ground is like a dance of strength around a center in which a great bewildered mind is bound. Yet now and then the curtain of the pupil silently parts: a picture goes inside, slips through the tightened limbs, and in the heart ceases to be, like something that has died. --Rainer Maria Rilke Translated by my father from the German in 1967, overnight, after a request from a colleague.