The Wrestling Match: Winning by Losing

How small that is, with which we wrestle,

What wrestles with us, how immense;

Were we to let ourselves, the way things do,

Be conquered thus by the great storm--

We would become far-reaching and nameless.

What we triumph over is the small,

And the success itself makes us small.

The eternal and unexampled

Will not be bent by us.

This is the Angel, who appeared

To the wrestlers of the Old Testament:

When his opponent's sinews

In that contest stretch like metal,

He feels them under his fingers

Like strings making deep melodies.

Whomever this Angel overcame

(who so often declined the fight)

He walks erect and justified

And great from that hard hand

Which, as if sculpting, nestled round him.

Winning does not tempt him.

His growth is this: to be

Deeply defeated by the ever-greater One

(Marie Rainer Rilke, "The Man Watching")