02 August 2012

Bounded / boundless

Evening
Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Randall Jarrell)

The evening folds about itself the dark
Garments the old trees hold out to it.
You watch: and the lands are borne from you,
One soaring heavenward, one falling;

And leave you here, not wholly either's,
Not quite so darkened as the silent houses,
Not quite so surely summoning the eternal
As that which each night becomes star, and rises;

And leave you (inscrutably to unravel)
Your life: the fearful and ripening and enormous
Being that—bounded by everything, or boundless—
For a moment becomes stone, for a moment stars.
10 PM, rain a nightly visitor, I'll do this until 2 (in the morning). This—work and wonder, fear and ripen, fall and soar, rise and darken.

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