The Grownup (Die Erwachsene)

Because I like to blog poetry, here is a poem.

Special shout out to Hipster Law Prof Dude (what else could be his cumbersome but not really opaque pseudonym given his penchant for The Shins, The Decemberist, and Joss Whedon?) in addition to my new Austrian friend.

I found this poem particularly poignant, and relevant to where I am in life right now.

The Grownup (Die Erwachsene)

All this stood upon her and was the world
and stood upon her with all its fear and grace
as trees stand, growing straight up, imageless
yet wholly image, like the Ark of God,
and solemn, as if imposed upon a race.

And she endured it all: bore up under
the swift-as-flight, the fleeting, the far-gone,
the inconceivably vast, the still-to-learn,
serenely as a woman carrying water
moves with a full jug. Till in the midst of play,
transfiguring and preparing for the future,
the first white veil descended, gliding softly

over her opened face, almost opaque there,
never to be lifted off again, and somehow
giving to all her questions just one answer:
In you, who were a child once--in you.

-- Rainier Maria Rilke