July 22, 2011

Evening

Farmhouse Among Trees

Slowly evening takes on the garments
held for it by a line of ancient trees.
You look, and the world recedes from you.
Part of it moves heavenward, the rest falls away.

And you are left, belonging to neither fully,
not quite so dark as the silent house,
not quite so sure of eternity
as that shining now in the night sky, a point of light.

You are left, for reasons you can't explain,
with a life that is anxious and huge,
so that, at times confined, at times expanding,
it becomes in you now stone, now star.

Book of Images

4 comments:

  1. The next time I feel confined in myself, I am going to try and remember this, especially the last stanza, which comforts me somehow.

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  2. I am always struck by how wonderfully the choice of image speaks to the text and vice versa.

    And the truth of these words about a life "at times confined, at times expanding, / ... now stone, now star." Beautiful!

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  3. i love this poem-- it was the first of Rilke's I ever read.... so evocative and exquisitely wrought. xxxj

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  4. Absolutely. On the edge of everything and belonging, where? Where do we belong? In the house? In the forest? In the sky?

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"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night."

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Go ahead, bloom recklessly!