Evening.

[patrice]

Slowly now the eveing changes his garments
held for him by a rim of ancient trees;
you gaze: and the landscape divides and leaves you,
one sinking and one rising toward the sky.

And you are left, to none belonging wholly,
not so dark as a silent house, nor quite
so surely pledged unto eternity
as that which grows to star and climbs the night.

To you is left (unspeakably confused)
your life, gigantic, ripening, full of fears,
so that it, now hemmed in, now grasping all,
is changed in you by turns to stone and to stars.

RM Rilke (19th Century Czech poet who wrote in German.)

[riverwalker]

1. "changing his garments" reminded me of this:

He wishes for the cloths of heaven

W.B. Yeats

HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with the golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams...

[patrice]

2. Thank you. I'm not familiar with that one, but Yeats's "garment" or body

metaphors continue in :

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
a tattered coat upon a stick,
Unless his soul clap and sing,
And Louder Singer,
for every tatter in it's mortal dress.

And, also from Yeats's Vacilation :

. . . No longer in Lethean foliage caught,
Begin preparations for your death,
And from the 40th winter,
By that thought
Test every work of intellect or faith,
And everything your own hand has wrought,
And call those works extravagance of breath
That are not suited for such as those who come
Proud, Open-eyed, and Laughing
To the Tomb.