The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven and one that falls;
and leave you not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion
of what becomes a star each night, and rises;
and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.
Rainer Maria Rilke
(translation by Stephen Mitchell)
2 comments:
I am experiencing waking up slowly with drying morning, left from dew and yesterday's rain. A bit of sun may be ours before the next rains. So an evening poem was a good thing to read, to savor. Thanks.
Yes, the paradox of living life I think, (or as Rilke says, unraveling your life,) being both at the same time - here and there, stone and star, not at home in either one. And yet for me, there is a longing, at times. for "the other"... I live with both...
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