Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colours
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 helplessly 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.
— English version by Robert Bly
Original Language German
Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke
from Amazon: For poetry lovers and students of literature and literary criticism, Robert Bly, the National Book Award-winning poet, brings his prowess as a translator and critic to bear on the work of one of the major German poets of the century.