Poetry - Antonio Machado

There's something about this time of year that makes me want to post poetry here. I was fortunate to find this video featuring a poem by Antonio Machado, as read by none other than Robert Bly, titled Last Night as I was Sleeping.

Some YouTube commenters took issue with the translation from the Spanish, especially the phrase, "marvelous error," which perhaps would be better translated as "illusion" or "vision." But the heart of the poem is there, I think, and it all works together (images, music, narration) quite beautifully.

What the Evening Reveals

© Photographer:Mark Ross | Agency: Dreamstime.com

I won't make it a habit to post poetry here, but I was going through a new book of poetry I got - a collection by the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke - and his poem Evening was so exquisite, I wanted to share it with you. The translator is Stephen Mitchell.

Evening

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.