9:00 am in the park
the flickering sunlight dances on the glossy red surface
of a coca-cola vending machine
SUNSET
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 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.
I will work in my own way,
