I want to unfold

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. 

 

listen to it here 

 

[Rainer Maria Rilke {1875-1926} 'I Am Too Alone in the World', from Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God]