through the wildest storm

I am too alone in the world,

and yet not alone enough

to make every moment holy.

I am too tiny in this world,

and not tiny enough

just to lie before you like a thing,

shrewd and secretive.

I want my own will,

and I want simply to be with my will,

as it goes toward action;

and in those quiet,

sometimes hardly moving times,

when something is coming near,

I want to be with those

who know secret things

or else alone.

I want to be a mirror for your whole body,

and I never want to be blind, or to be too old

to hold up your heavy and swaying picture.

I want to unfold.

I don’t want to stay folded anywhere,

because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

and I want my grasp of things to be

true before you.

I want to describe myself

like a painting that I looked at

closely for a long time,

like a saying that I finally understood,

like the pitcher I use every day,

like the face of my mother,

like a ship that carried me

through the wildest storm of all.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God