Hello Friends!
Each April, I celebrate National Poetry Month by sharing with you all some of what I love about poetry — through 30 poems from 30 poets delivered to your inboxes over 30 days.
As you may recall, 811 is the Dewey Decimal System call number for American Poetry, and that’s the section of my personal library where I’ll be asking you to meet me once a day (mostly, with a few dabblings in international work).
No prior poetry experience is required to enjoy this poem-a-day list! So feel free to invite friends and family to join you in this little poetry month celebration. Just send me an email, or sign up through this blog meetmein811.org — where you can also find an archive of the past eight years of poem-a-days.
Without further ado, here is your first poem! In this translation by Robert Bly, Rilke uses the sunset to embody multiple types of transitions, in-between spaces. He also reminds us that all life, all of the matter that makes us up, all energy, can be traced back to (and may return to) suns.
Enjoy.
Ellen
Sunset
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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