You Are the Future

You are the future, great dawning sky

above the planes of eternity.

You are the rooster’s cry after the deep night,

the dew, morning prayer, and the girl,

the stranger, the mother, and death.

You are the form transforming yourself,

which always rises alone from fate’s grasp,

which remains uncelebrated and unlamented

and uncharted like a wild forest.

You are the deep essence of things,

withholding the last word of your being,

revealing yourself to others always differently:

to the ship as shoreline and to the land as ship.

  Rainer Maria Rilke, from Von der Pilgerschaft in

    Das Stunden-Buch; Sämtliche Werke.

    Werkausgabe, vol. 1, 326 – 7; translated

    by Mark S. Burrows (2012)