Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you,
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,
leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so helplessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs -
leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you,
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,
leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so helplessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs -
leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.
4 comments:
Beautiful sunset! I like your blog and I will follow it and visit it again! Regards from Madrid
Hi Meredith... been following your blog for a bit. And I've gone back and read a lot of the old posts. You always provide some very rich beautiful stuff.
I like how this posits the two parts of us... and how with a sunset one part arches away upward... and another downward... the body and the spirit.
Keep doing the great work you do.
David
Thank you Nieves and David. I appreciate your comments.
David - I felt that body-spirit connection in the poem, too. Rilke always seems to point to that deeper quality of our lives.
"...leaving you, not really belonging to either...
leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing..."
Sad/joyful heart, so rich, so beautiful...
Joe
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