# The Watcher

> By Rainer Maria Rilke

**Published by:** [Compossible - that which can live together](https://paragraph.com/@compossible/)
**Published on:** 2024-10-16
**Categories:** poetry, ai-art, rilke, watcher
**URL:** https://paragraph.com/@compossible/the-watcher

## Content

Stale dull days, I can tell the storms are coming by the trees that rap against the worried window-panes and I hear the sound of distant things, saying that which: I cannot bear without a friend, cannot love without a sister.The storm transforms, reshaping as it blows through the forest, through time, leaving everything ageless: the landscape, like a verse in the holy psalms, serious, forceful and eternal.How little is that which we contest, what wrestles with us, how great! if we would let ourselves be conquered, by the great storm (as do other things), we too might become immense, vast and nameless.What we defeat is so tiny, and the success makes us small, the eternal and extraordinary will not be bent by us.Think of the Angel who appeared to the wrestlers of the Old Testament: His adversary's sinews were stretched, and strengthened (like steel) by the battle and were plucked by His fingers like strings, deep melodies.That man, whom the Angel honours in deigning to fight, was vanquished, yet he strides forth proud, made strong by the hard hand that carved him.Victories do not tempt him: that man grows only by being beaten, in resounding defeat against ever greater things. AI-artDer Schauende, from The Book of Images by Rainer Maria Rilke. Translation by me. Thanks to Andrew Garfield for bringing this to people's attention in his beautiful reading of the version titled The Man Watching, by Robert Bly and for his reading of Learning to Measure Time in Love and Loss by Chris Huntington:","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Spotify","thumbnail_url":"https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/334bdc8fb15f3bcbebfa0e89571ecee9.jpg","type":"rich","thumbnail_height":300,"image":{"base64":"data:image/png;base64,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","img":{"width":300,"height":300,"src":"https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/334bdc8fb15f3bcbebfa0e89571ecee9.jpg"}}}" format="iframe">Andrew Garfield Wants to Crack Open Your HeartListen to this episode from Modern Love on Spotify. In the new movie "We Live in Time," the actor Andrew Garfield plays a newly divorced man named Tobias who falls in love with a chef named Almut, played by Florence Pugh. Their story feels epic and expansive, but still intimate.https://spotify.com

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