poem of the week: evening
It's spring, really absolutely spring, and I am giddy with it. It's warm and fresh and exploding with living things and I can run about barefooted if I want (which I don't really, and swinging barefooted by the church wall gets me in irritatingly close contact with thorns) and spend hours sitting out on the roof out my bedroom window playing my guitar and reading and watching people and dogs wander by.
Spring and Rilke seem to go together somehow, maybe because they both have a feeling of wonder and joy and delicacy. So here is your weekly dose of poetry, which made me a bit breathless when I read it a moment ago.
Evening
Ranier Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell
The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;
and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion of what becomes
a star each night, and rises;
and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.
On the Doctor Who front (yes, there is one), 'Daleks in Manhattan' is loads of fun, even if the American accents are groan-worthy, to say the least; and I discovered several days ago that the Meholicks, who I have known for five years and whose house I am currently living in have been Doctor Who fans for years and NEVER SAW FIT TO TELL ME ABOUT IT. (Mrs. M didn't know there was a new series, though. Poor dear! ;D) I have been extended an invitation to drop by sometime and watch their collection of Fourth Doctor episodes (!!!!!).