Zeek: Poetry: Grown Woman

Grown Woman
R. M. Rilke
translation by Rosemary Hutzler

All of it stood upon her and was the world,
and on her, with the rest, stood grace and terror
the way trees stand, straight up and growing taller,
pure image and purely abstract, like the Covenant Ark,
and gravely, as though given to a nation.

She bore up under it, bore up and out
what fluttered past; was fleeting, farthest distant,
the vast of what was yet to be encountered
as the full vessel by the water girl is borne,
evenly. Until, amidst the game
of changing shape and other preparation,
the first white veil came drifting leisurely
over the unfolded countenance,

nearly impossible to see through, never to come off,
and somehow, for every question, giving her
back a solitary, indefinite answer:
In you, remnant of the child you were, in you.

R.M. Rilke, "Die Erwachsene"