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Sunset
by Rainer Maria Rilke

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.

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