He walks down the afternoon streets
In wooden slippers
Under a palm umbrella
Sending down gentle reminders.

There ,at the junction , in a sea of cars
Stand muddy-haired children
They have a nasty habit of poking
Their grubby hands directly
Into the holes of your eyes.

Book upon book, little hillocks
Good enough for eagles' view,
She looks down, calmly
I try climbing the hillocks.
It is pretty dizzy over there
Let me open the curtains
The sun is behind the hills.
The shadow of the hills
Grows minute by minute
And, silently, book by book.

Those days they might have been
Pain in the butt
But now they are no more.
Nevertheless they were
Gentlemen while they lasted.
They are still gentlemen
In our vivid memories minus
The pain in the butt.
We now prefer to forget
Their paininthebuttness

Now that they are no more
And were gentlemen
While they lasted.
Their nomoreness has made it
Difficult to hold the past
Paininthebuttness against them.

Because when they lay stretched
In the white cloth under the sky
Their fixed gaze told our future story.

Remembrance by Rilke

“In the dusk you notice the book shelves
with their volumes in gold and in brown;
and you think of far lands you journeyed,
of pictures and of shimmering gowns
worn by women you conquered and lost.
And it comes to you all of a sudden:
That was it! And you arise, for you are
aware of a year in your distant past
with its fears and events and prayers."

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

When “in the dusk you notice the bookshelves” and you think of far lands you journeyed /of pictures and of shimmering gowns worn by women/you conquered and lost”,then you become suddenly "aware of the year in the past/ with its fears ,events and prayers”

The syntactical disentangling makes it so much easier to understand the poem quickly. The typical Rilke is of course in the way ,after so much of talking about the cause for the rumination,suddenly the whole thing comes before you without preparation in the last three or four words .