SUNSET, STONE, AND STAR

                                                        Sunset

                                             by Rainer Maria Rilke

                                          (translated by Robert Bly)

                      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 have you,

                      one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,

                      leaving you, not really belonging to either,

                      not so hopelessly 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 of your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.


Note on Translation:  In The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke (edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell), this poem is listed under the title, "Evening."  While I like Mitchell's translations on the whole, I prefer Bly's translation in this particular case.  See Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Robert Bly).