Translation: Curious Freedom

The Panther

The bars which pass and strike across his gaze

have stunned his sight: the eyes have lost their hold.

To him it seems there are a thousand bars,

a thousand bars and nothing else. No World.

And pacing out that mean, constrictged ground,

so quiet, supple, powerful, his stride

is like a ritual dance performed around

the centre where his baffled will survives.

The silent shutter of his eye sometimes

slides open to admit some thing outside;

an image runs through each expectant limb

and penetrates his heart, and dies.

Rilke

translator Stephen Cohn

Velocity

In the club car that morning I had my notebook

open on my lap and my pen uncapped,

looking every inch the writer

right down to the little writer's frown on my face,

but there was nothing to write about

except life and death

and the low warning sound of the train whistle.

I did not want to wrtite about the scenery

that was flashing past, cows spread over a pasture,

hay rolled up meticulously---

things you see once and will never see again.

But I kept my pen moving by drawing

over and over again

the face of a motorcyclist in profile---

for no reason I can think of--

a biker with sunglasses and a weak chin,

leaning forward, helmetless,

his long thin hair trailing behind him in the wind.

I also drew many lines to indicate speed,

to show the air becoming visible

as it broke over the biker's face

the way it was breaking over teh face

of teh locomotive that was pulling me

toward Omaha and whaterver lay beyond Omaha

for me and all the other stops to make

before the time would arrive to stop for good.

We must always look at things

from the point of view of eternity,

the college theologieans used to insist,

from which, I imagine, we would all

appear to have speed lines trailing behind us

as we rush along teh road of the world,

as we rush down the long tunnel of time--

the biker, of course, drunk on the wind,

but also the man reading by a fire,

speed lines coming off his shoulders and his book

and the woman standing on a beach

studying the curve of the horizon,

even the child asleep on a summer night,

speed lines flying from the posters of her bed,

from the white tips of the pillowcases,

and from the edges of her perfectly motionless body.

Billy Collins