Personal anthology: Rainer Maria Rilke

By on June 6th, 2004

Evening

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.

— Rainer Maria Rilke (trans. Stephen Mitchell)

Someday I will learn enough German to be able to read Rilke in the original (which can be found here, for those readers who know more German than I do).

Categorized under: Commonplaces.
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One Response to “Personal anthology: Rainer Maria Rilke”

  1. Cleis says:
    June 18, 2004 at 11:11 pm

    Ooooh, a lover once gave me this, beautifully lettered. I’d forgotten.