i give you the end of a golden string, just wind it into a ball ... William Blake

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I am too alone in the world, and not alone enough to make every minute 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 the silent, 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 old 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 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 took me safely through the wildest storm of all.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

Robert Bly version

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the beauty we love
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