We cannot know his undiscovered head

in which the apples of the eyes ripen. Yet

his torso still glows like a candelabra,

in which his seeing, now constrained,

remains and shines. Otherwise the curve

of the breast could not dazzle you, nor could a smile

pass through the quiet axis of the loins

to that centre where procreation swelled.

Otherwise this stone would be disfigured, and cut short,

under the shoulders’ transparent fall,

and would not glimmer so, like a predator’s pelt:

and would not flare out from all its edges

like a star: for here there is no place

that does not see you. You must transmute your life.

– Rainer Maria Rilke

*Image is sculpture in Musee D’Orsay- Paris, not of sculpture described in poem