This difficult living, heavy and as if all tied up,
moving through that which has been left undone,
is like the not-quite-finished walk of the swan.
And dying, this slipping away from
the ground upon which we stand every day,
is his anxious letting himself fall—:

into the waters, which receive him gladly
and which, as if happily already gone by,
draw back under him, wave after wave;
while the swan, infinitely calm and self-assured,
opener and more magnificent
and more serene, allows himself to be drawn on.

Neue Gedichte (New Poems) (1907)