His vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else. It seems to him there are a thousand bars; and benind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, the movement of his powerful soft strides is like a ritual dance around a center in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
Only at times, the curtain of the pupils lifts, quietly-. An image enters in, rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles, plunges into the heart and is gone.
-Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell.