May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.


-- Rainer Maria Rilke
(in Rilke's Book of Hours,
translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)