Slowly the West Reaches

Cold January Sunset

Sunset

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 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 your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.

Another post & another poem
in honor of my mother's 91st birthday
January 21, 1931 ~ June 15, 2020

Again, Again!

Again, again, even if we know the country side of love,
and the tiny churchyard with it's names mourning,
and the chasm, more and more silent, terrifying, into which
the others

dropped: we walk out together anyway
beneath the ancient trees, we lie down again,
again among the flowers [or the snow!], and face the sky.

Both poems by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)
Translated by Robert Bly (1926 – 2021)

See also:
"Staying Alive" ~ FN & QK
"Fenceposts" ~ FN & QK