The dependably great folk singer-songwriter Laura Veirs — Stereogum’s first-ever Artist To Watch — put out her latest album My Echo toward the end of last year. And now she’s following it up with two versions of a song called “The Panther,” based on Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem of the same name. This is what she had to say about the project in a statement:

In recent years I’ve been writing different versions of songs to try to find the right “musical home” for lyrics that resonate with me. Here are two such versions of a song I wrote called “The Panther,” after a poem by same name by the Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke. I recorded these on GarageBand at my home in Portland, OR in 2016.

I am sharing these songs now because I like them and think listeners might find them interesting, especially because they are such radically different musical treatments of essentially the same lyrics. I also want to share them now because this song adapts words from one of my favorite poems (my favorite translation is the one by Stephen Mitchell, below). Since many of us around the world are still in quarantine, I think listeners will be able to relate to the plight of Rilke’s panther. There are times in life when we find ourselves trapped, either by external circumstances or by self-limitation, or both. Hopefully in those times we can realize that our state of confinement will change and pass, like all things, eventually.

The beautiful panther art that accompanies these songs is by Portland-based artist Anisa Makhoul.

– Laura Veirs, Portland, OR / Feb 2021

Listen to “The Panther” below.