Letting go

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

This morning I found a marvelous poem by Rilke. The image is powerfully evocative and compelling, I think:

This clumsy living that moves lumbering
as if in ropes through what is not done,
reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.

And to die, which is the letting go
of the ground we stand on and cling to every day,
is like the swan, when he nervously lets himself
down
into the water, which receives him gaily
and which flows joyfully under
and after him, wave after wave,
while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm,
is pleased to be carried, each moment more fully
grown,
more like a king, further and further on.

-Translated by Robert Bly