Evening, a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke at Spillwords.com
Roberto Nickson

Evening

Evening

a poem by: Rainer Maria Rilke

translated by: Stephen Mitchell

 

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, 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.

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