PatB of Blogit just reminded in an email of the beauty of Rilke's poetry and one of my favorite poems that I so identify with. Here it is, it's a short poem, only 3 stanzas:
The Panther

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tense, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

I discovered it about 1990, and the feeling of the tension of the big, beautiful, black cat caged in a cell without release so resonates with me for a variety of reasons.