THE PANTHER

"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."

-Rainer Maria Rilke