The Apple Orchard

Come when the sun has set and you shall see
the green of evening stain the grassy ground:
how easily we might belive that we
ourselves had tended it and sown,

so that in present feeling and remembering
of new-born hopes, of half-forgtoten joys
seasoned with darker feelings deep within,
we could believe we now spread out before us

the heavy harvest of a hundred dyas
beneath old trees that Durer might have drawn
which stand their silent, serving, seeking ways
to bear the fruits which weigh their branches down;

to raise and proffer what grows, measureless,
for those who long and patiently endure --
who all their lives sustaining their desire
for one thing only, silently increase.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke