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Georg Trakl: Sebastian in Dream
(published in 1915 by the Kurt Wolff publishing house, Leipzig)
Translated by Jim Doss and Werner Schmitt.
leads to the German originals.

and the
German version of the Trakl-Site.  

Devided into five sections:

Sebastian in Dream
Autumn of the Lonely
Seven-song of Death
Song of the Departed
Dream and Derangement

Sebastian in Dream

Childhood

The elder full of fruit; calmly childhood dwelled

In a blue cave. Over the bygone path

Where brownish the wild grass now swishes,

Silent branches ponder; the rustle of leaves

Like when blue water sounds in stone.

The blackbirds' lament is soft. A shepherd

Follows the sun speechlessly, that rolls down the autumnal hill.

A blue moment is only more soul.

Along the forest edge a shy deer appears and peacefully

The old bells and sinister hamlets rest in the valley.

More devoutly you know the meaning of the dark years,

Coolness and autumn in lonely rooms;

And shining footsteps ring forth in holy blueness.

Quietly an open window rattles; tears flow

At the sight of the decayed cemetery by the hill,

Memories of retold legends; but the soul sometimes brightens

When it thinks glad people, dark-gold spring days.

Hourly Song

With dark gazes the lovers look at each other,

The blonde, radiant ones. In rigid sinisterness

Their yearning arms lankly entwine.

Purple, the blessed one's mouth broke. Round eyes

Mirror the dark gold of the spring afternoon,

Edge and blackness of the forest, evening-anguishes in the green;

Perhaps the unspeakable flight of birds, the unborn's

Path past sinister villages, lonely summers

And sometimes out of decayed blueness a demised shape steps.

Quietly the yellow corn rustles in the acre.

Life is hard and the countryman swings the scythe steely,

The carpenter joins enormous rafters.

The leaves in autumn tinge purple; the monkish spirit

Wanders through cheerful days; the grape is ripe

And the air festive in spacious courtyards.

The yellowed fruits smell sweeter; the laughter of the joyful

Is quiet, music and dance in shady cellars;

In the dusking garden step and stillness of the dead boy.

En-route

In the evening they carried the stranger into the chamber of the dead;

A smell of tar; the quiet rustling of red sycamores;

The dark flight of the jackdaws; a guard entered the square.

The sun has sunk into black linens; again and again this past evening returns.

From an adjoining room, the sister plays a sonata from Schubert.

Very quietly her smile sinks into the decayed fountain

Which murmurs bluish in the dusk. O how old is our race.

Somebody whispers down there in the garden; somebody has left this black sky.

On the cabinet apples smell. Grandmother lights golden candles.

O, how mild is the autumn. Quietly our steps sound in the old park

Under tall trees. O, how serious is the hyacinthine countenance of the dusk.

The blue spring by your feet, mysteriously the red silence of your mouth,

Overshadowed by the slumber of foliage, the dark gold of decayed sunflowers.

Your eyelids are heavy from poppy and dream quietly on my forehead.

Soft bells tremble through the breast. A blue cloud,

Your countenance has sunk over me in the dusk.

A song with guitar, that sounds out in a strange inn,

The wild elder bushes there, a long past November day,

Familiar steps on the dusking staircase, the sight of brown rafters,

An open window in which a sweet hope stayed behind -

All this is unspeakable, o God, that one breaks down on the knees shaken.

O, how dark is this night. A purple flame

Expired at my mouth. In the stillness,

The anxious soul's lonely string music dies down.

Cease, when drunk with wine the head sinks into the gutter.

Landscape

September evening; sadly the shepherds' dark calls sound
Through the dusking village; fire sprays in the smithy.
Enormously a black horse rears up; the hyacinthine locks of the maid
Snatch after the fervency of its purple nostrils.
Quietly, the call of the doe stiffens at the edge of the forest
And the yellow flowers of autumn
Bend speechless over the blue countenance of the pond.
In red flame a tree burned; with dark faces the bats flutter up.

To the Boy Elis

Elis, when the blackbird calls in the black woods,
This is your decline.
Your lips drink the coolness of the blue rock-spring.

Cease, when your forehead bleeds quietly
Ancient legends
And dark interpretations of the flight of birds.

But with gentle steps you walk into the night,
That hangs full of purple grapes,
And you move the arms more beautifully in the blueness.

A thorn bush tinges,
Where your moon-like eyes are.
O, how long, Elis, have you been dead.

Your body is a hyacinth,
Into which a monk dips his waxy fingers.
Our silence is a black cavern,

From which a soft animal steps at times
And slowly lowers heavy eyelids.
On your temples black dew drips,

The last gold of expired stars.

Elis

1

Perfect is the stillness of this golden day.
Under ancient oaks
You appear, Elis, as one at rest with round eyes.

Their blue mirrors the slumber of lovers.
By your mouth
Their rosy sighs fell silent.

In the evening the fisherman hauled in the heavy nets.
A good shepherd
Leads his flock along the forest's edge.
O! how righteous, Elis, are all your days.

Quietly
Along bleak walls the olive tree's blue stillness sinks,
Fades away the dark song of an old man.

A golden boat
Sways your heart, Elis, in the lonely sky.

2

A soft glockenspiel sounds in Elis' breast

In the evening,

When his head sinks into the black pillow.

A blue deer

Quietly bleeds in the thorn brush.

A brown tree stands isolated there;

Its blue fruits have fallen from it.

Signs and stars

Sink down quietly in the evening pond.

Behind the hill it has become winter.

Blue doves

Drink at night the icy sweat

Which runs from Elis' crystal forehead.

Always
God's lonely wind sounds along black walls.

Hohenburg

Nobody is in the house. Autumn in rooms;

Moon-bright sonata

And the awakening at the edge of the dusking forest.

You always imagine the white countenance of man

Far from the turmoil of time;

Over a dreaming shape green branches bend with pleasure,

Cross and evening;

The sounding one is embraced with purple arms by his star,

That climbs up to uninhabited windows.

Thus the stranger trembles in darkness

As he quietly lifts his eyelids over a human shape,

That is far away; the silver voice of the wind in the hallway.

Sebastian in Dream
   For Adolf Loos

Mother bore the infant in the white moon,

In the shadow of the walnut tree, the ancient elder,

Drunk with the juice of the poppy, the lament of the thrush;

And silently

A bearded face bent over her in compassion

Quietly in the darkness of the window; and the old household goods

Of the fathers

Lay in decay; love and autumnal reverie.

So dark the day of the year, sad childhood,

When quietly the boy climbed down to cool waters, silver fishes,

Rest and countenance;

When stony he threw himself before raving black horses,

In grey night his star came over him;

Or when he walked at the freezing hand of the mother

In the evening over Saint Peter's autumnal cemetery,

A delicate corpse lay still in the darkness of the chamber

And the other one raised the cold eyelids over him.

But he was a small bird in bleak branches,

The bell long in the November evening,

The father's stillness, as in sleep he descended the dusking spiral stair.

2

Peace of the soul. Lonesome winter evening,

The dark figures of the shepherds by the old pond;

Infant in the hut of straw; o how quietly

The countenance sank in black fever.

Holy night.

Or when he at the hard hand of the father

Silently climbed the sinister Mount Calvary

And in dusking rock-niches

The blue figure of man went through his legend,

Blood ran purple from the wound under the heart.

O how quietly the cross rose up in the dark soul.

Love; when in black corners the snow melted,

A blue breeze cheerfully caught itself in the old elder,

In the shadowy arch of the walnut tree;

And quietly a rosy angel appeared to the boy.

Joy; when in cool rooms an evening sonata sounded,

In the brown rafters

A blue moth crept from its silver chrysalis.

O the nearness of death. In stony wall

A yellow head bent, silencing the child,

When in that March the moon decayed.

3

Rosy Easter Bell in the burial vault of night

And the silver voices of the stars

So that in showers a dark insanity sank from the forehead of the sleeper.

O how silent a walk down the blue river,

Pondering on things forgotten, when in green branches

The thrush calls a stranger into decline.

Or when he walked at the bony hand of the old man

Evenings before the decayed wall of the city,

And the other one bore a rosy infant in a black coat,

In the shadow of the walnut tree the spirit of evil appeared.

Groping over the green steps of summer. O how quietly

The garden decayed in autumn's brown stillness,

Scent and gloom of the old elder tree,

When in Sebastian's shadow the silver voice of the angel died.

At the Moor

Wanderer in the black wind; quietly the dry reeds whisper

In the stillness of the moor. In the gray sky

A flock of wild birds follows;

Slanting over sinister waters.

Turmoil. In decayed hut

Putrefaction flutters up with black wings.

Crippled birches sigh in the wind.

Evening in deserted tavern. The way home is scented all around

By the soft gloom of grazing herds,

Apparition of the night: toads plunge out of silver waters.

In Spring

Quietly snow sank from dark steps,
In the shadow of the trees
Lovers raise the rosy eyelids.

Always star and night
Follow the mariners' dark calls;
And the oars beat quietly in time.

Soon by the decayed wall
Violets bloom,
So silently the temple of the lonely one turns green.

Evening in Lans

Wanderings through the dusking summer

Past bundles of yellowed corn. Beneath whitewashed arches,

Where the swallow flew out and in, we drank fiery wine.

Beautiful: o gloom and purple laughter.

Evening and the dark scents of green

Cool our glowing foreheads with showers.

Silver waters trickle over the steps of the forest,

The night and speechless a forgotten life.

Friend; the leafy footbridges into the village.

At the Mönchsberg

Where in the shadow of autumnal elms the decayed path sinks downward,

Far from the huts of foliage, sleeping shepherds,

Always the dark figure of coolness follows the wanderer

Over the bony footbridge, the hyacinthine voice of the boy,

Quietly telling the forgotten legend of the forest,

Softer a sick shape now the wild lament of the brother.

Thus a scanty green touches the knee of the stranger,

The petrified head;

Nearer the blue spring murmurs the lament of women.

Kaspar Hauser Song
   To Bessie Loos

Truly he loved the sun, which descended purple behind the hill,

The paths of the forest, the singing blackbird,

And the joy of green.

Serious was his dwelling in the shadow of the tree

And his countenance pure.

God spoke a soft flame to his heart:

O man!

Silently his footstep found the city in the evening;

The dark lament of his mouth:

I want to become a horseman.

But bush and animal followed him,

House and the dusking garden of white humans

And his murderer searched for him.

Spring and summer and beautiful the autumn

Of the righteous one, his quiet step

Past the dark rooms of dreamers.

At night he remained alone with his star;

Saw snow falling into bleak branches

And in the dusking hallway the shadow of the murderer.

Silverly the head of the unborn sank.

At Night

The blueness of my eyes is extinguished in this night,
The red gold of my heart. O! how still the light burned.
Your blue coat surrounded the sinking one;
Your red mouth sealed the friend's derangement.

Metamorphosis of Evil

Autumn: black striding along the forest edge; moment of mute destruction; the forehead of the leper eavesdrops under the bleak tree. Long past evening, that now sinks over stages of moss; November. A bell rings and the shepherd leads a herd of black and red horses into the village. Under the hazel bush, the green hunter disembowels a deer. His hands smoke from blood and the shadow of the deer sighs in leaves over the eyes of the man, brown and taciturn; the forest. Crows, that scatter; three. Their flight resembles a sonata full of faded chords and manly gloom; quietly a golden cloud dissolves. By the mill boys light a fire. Flame is the brother of the palest one, and the other one laughs buried in his purple hair; or it is a place of murder passed by a stony path. The barberries are gone, year-long it dreams in leaden air under the pines; fear, green darkness, the gurgling of a drowning man; from the starry pond the fisherman pulls a large black fish, countenance filled with cruelty and madness. The voices of reeds, of quarreling men in the back, the other one sways in a red boat across the freezing waters of autumn, living in dark legends of his race and the eyes opened stony over nights and virgin terrors. Evil.
   What forces you to stand silently on the decayed stair in the house of your fathers? Leaden blackness. What do you lift with silver hand to the eyes; and the eyelids sink as if drunk from poppy? But through the wall of stone you see the starry sky, the Milky Way, Saturn; red. Raging, a bleak tree knocks against the wall of stone. You on decayed stages: tree, star, stone! You, a blue animal that quietly trembles; you, the pale priest who slaughters it on the black altar. O your smile in the darkness, sad and evil, so that a child turns pale in sleep. A red flame jumped out of your hand and a moth burned up in it. O the flute of light; o the flute of death. What forced you to stand silently on the decayed stair in the house of your fathers? Below at the gate an angel knocks with crystalline finger.
   O the hell of sleep; dark alley, small brown garden. Quietly in the blue evening the figure of the dead rings. Little green flowers surround them and their countenance has left them. Or it bends faded over the cold forehead of the murderer in the darkness of the hallway; adoration, purple flame of lust; dying, the sleeper fell over black stages into the darkness.
   Somebody left you at the the crossroad and you look back for a long time. Silver step in the shadow of small crippled apple trees. The fruit shines purple in black branches and in the grass the snake molts. O! the darkness; the sweat that appears on the icy forehead, and the sad dreams in the wine, in the village inn under the smoke-blackened rafters. You, still the wilderness that conjures rosy islands from the brown tobacco clouds, and draws from the interior the wild cry of a raptor, that chases around black cliffs in sea, storm and ice. You, a green metal and inside a fiery face, that wants to pass and sing away sinister ages and the flaming fall of the angel from the hill of skeletons. O! desperation, which with mute cry breaks to the knee.
   A dead person visits you. From the heart self-spilt blood runs and in the black eyebrow an unspeakable moment nests; dark encounter. You - a purple moon, when the other one appears in the green shadow of the olive tree. After this everlasting night follows.

Autumn of the Lonely

In the Park

Again wandering in the old park,

O! stillness of yellow and red flowers.

You also mourn, you soft gods,

And the autumnal gold of the elm.

In the bluish pond the reeds rise

Motionless, the thrush falls silent in the evening.

O! then you should also bend the forehead

Before the ancestors' decayed marble.

A Winter Evening

When the snow falls against the window,

The evening bell rings long,

The table is prepared for many,

And the house is well cultivated.

Some in their wanderings

Come to the gate on dark paths.

The tree of grace blooms golden

From the earth's cool sap.

Wanderer, step silently inside;

Pain has petrified the threshold.

There in pure radiance

Bread and wine glow on the table.

The Cursed

1

It dusks. The old women go to the well.

In the darkness of the chestnuts, a red laughs.

From a shop the scent of bread trickles

And sunflowers sink over the fence.

By the river the inn still sounds tepid and quiet.

A guitar hums; a jingling of money.

A halo falls upon that small child,

Who waits before the glass door soft and white.

O! blue radiance which she awakens in the panes,

Framed by thorns, black and stiffly ecstasized.

A crooked writer smiles as if crazy

Into water, which a wild uproar frightens.

2

In the evening, the plague borders her blue garment

And quietly a sinister guest closes the door.

The black burden of the maple sinks through the window;

A boy lays the forehead in her hand.

Often her eyelids sink evil and heavy.

The child's hands trickle through her hair

And his tears fall hot and clear

Into her eye sockets black and empty.

A nest of scarlet colored snakes rears up

Sluggishly in her troubled womb.

The arms release a dead shape
That is surrounded by a carpet's sadness.

3

Into the brown garden a glockenspiel sounds.

In the darkness of the chestnuts a blueness floats,

The sweet coat of a strange woman.

Scent of mignonettes ; and a glowing sense

Of evil. The damp forehead bends cold and pale

Over muck, where the rat digs,

Flooded by the tepid scarlet shine of stars;

In the garden apples fall stuffy and gently.

The night is black. Ghostly the foehn billows

Through the sleepwalking boy's white nightgown

And quietly the hand of the dead reaches

In his mouth. Sonja smiles soft and beautiful.

Sonja

Evening returns in the old garden.

Sonja's life, blue stillness.

Wild birds' migrations;

Bleak tree in autumn and stillness.

Sunflower, softly bent

Over Sonja's white life.

Wound, red, never shown,

Requires dark rooms to live,

Where the blue bells ring;

Sonja's step and soft stillness.

A dying animal greets slipping away,

Bleak tree in autumn and stillness.

Sun of ancient days shines

Over Sonja's white brows,

Snow, which moistens her cheeks

And the wilderness of her brows.

Along

Corn and grape are cut,

The hamlet in autumn and rest.

Hammer and anvil clang incessantly,

Laughter in purple bower.

Bring asters from dark fences

To the white child.

Say how long we've been dead;

Sun wants to appear black.

Small red fish in the pond;

Forehead, that listens fearfully to itself;

Evening wind quietly rustles at the window,

Blue singsong of an organ.

Star and secret glittering

Allow still one more glance up.

Phantom of the mother in pain and dread;

Black mignonettes in the dark.

Autumn Soul

Hunter's call and bloody baying;

Behind cross and brown hill

Placidly the pond-mirror blinds,

The hawk cries hard and bright.

Over stubble field and path

A black silence already trembles;

Pure sky in the branches;

Only the brook trickles still and calm.

Soon fish and deer slip away.

Blue soul, dark wandering

Separated us soon from loves, others.

Evening changes sense and image.

Righteous life's bread and wine,

God in your mild hands

Man lays the dark end,

All guilt and red anguish.

Afra

A child with brown hair. Prayer and amen

Darken silently the coolness of evening

And Afra's smile, red in yellow frame

Of sunflowers, fear and grey sultriness.

Wrapped in blue coat, the monk saw her

In former times devoutly painted in church windows;

This should still be friendly escort through pain

When her stars haunt through his blood.

Autumn decline; and the elder-trees' silence.

The water's blue moving stirs the forehead,

A hairy cloth is laid upon a bier.

Rotten fruits fall from the branches;

Unspeakable is the flight of birds, encounter

With the dying; after this dark years follow.

Autumn of the Lonely

The dark autumn returns filled with fruit and plentitude,

Yellowed shine of beautiful summer days.

A pure blueness steps from a decayed hull;

The flight of the birds sounds from old legends.

The wine is pressed, the mild stillness

Fulfilled with the quiet answer of dark questions .

And here and there, a cross on barren hill;

In the red forest a herd tails off.

The cloud wanders over the pond-mirror;

The countryman's calm gesture rests.

Very quietly the evening's blue wing stirs

A roof of dried straw, the black earth.

Soon stars nest in the brows of the weary one;

In cool rooms a silent modesty enters

And angels step quietly from the blue

Eyes of lovers, who suffer more softly.

The reed murmurs; a bony horror attacks

When dew drips blackly from bleak willows.

Seven-song of Death

Rest and Silence

Shepherds buried the sun in the bleak forest.

A fisherman drew

The moon from the freezing pond in a hairy net.

In blue crystal

The pale man dwells, the cheek leaned on his stars;

Or he inclines the head in purple sleep.

But always the black flight of birds touches

The beholder, the sanctity of blue flowers,

The nearby stillness ponders forgotten things, extinct angels.

Again the forehead nightfalls into moony stone.

A radiant youth,

The sister appears in autumn and black putrefaction.

Anif

Memory: gulls, gliding over the dark sky

Of manly gloom.

Silently you dwell in the shadow of the autumnal ash tree,

Sunken into the hill's righteous dimension;

Always you walk down the green river,

When evening has come,

Sounding love; peacefully the dark deer encounters,

A rosy man; drunk with bluish weather

The forehead stirs the dying leaves

And thinks the serious countenance of the mother;

O, how everything sinks into darkness;

The austere rooms and the old utensils

Of the ancestors.

This shakes the breast of the stranger.

O, you signs and stars.

Large is the guilt of the born. Woe, you golden shivers

Of death

When the soul dreams cooler blooms.

Always the nocturnal bird cries in bare branches

Over the moony one's steps,

An icy wind sounds by the walls of the village.

Birth

Mountains: blackness, silence and snow.

The hunt descends red from the forest.

O, the mossy gazes of the deer.

The mother's stillness; under black firs

Sleeping hands open

When the cold moon appears decayed.

O, the birth of man. Nocturnally blue water

Murmers in the rocky ground;

Sighing, the fallen angel beholds his image,

A pale shape awakens in a stuffy room.

Two moons,

The eyes of the stony old woman gleam.

Woe, the birthing woman's scream. With black wings

The night touches the boy's temple,

Snow that falls quietly from a purple cloud.

Decline 
   To Karl Borromaeus Heinrich

Over the white pond
The wild birds have transmigrated.
In the evening an icy wind blows from our stars.

Over our graves
The broken forehead of night bends.
Under oaks we sway in a silver boat.

Always the white walls of the city resound.
Under arches of thorns
O my brother we climb blind pointers toward midnight.

To One Who Died Early

O, the black angel who stepped quietly from inside the tree

When we were soft playmates in the evening

At the edge of the bluish fountain.

Our step was calm, the round eyes in the brown coolness of autumn,

O, the purple sweetness of the stars.

But the other one descended the stony stages of the Mönchsberg,

A blue smile on the countenance and strangely pupated

In his silenter childhood and died;

And the silver countenance of the friend remained in the garden,

Listening in leaf or in ancient stones.

Soul sang death, the green rot of the flesh

And it was the murmur of the forest,

The fervent lament of the deer.

Always the blue evening bells rang from the dusky towers.

Hour came when the other one saw the shadows in the purple sun,

The shadows of putrescence in bleak branches;

Evening, when the blackbird sang by dusking wall,

The ghost of the one who died early silently appeared in the room.

O, the blood that runs from the throat of the sounding one,

Blue flower; o the fiery tear

Wept in the night.

Golden cloud and time. In a lonely chamber

You invite the dead person to be a guest more often,

Wander in intimate conversation under elms down the green river.

Spiritual Dusk

Silently a dark deer encounters at the edge

Of the forest;

At the hill the evening wind ends quietly,

The blackbird's lament grows mute

And the soft flutes of autumn

Silence in the reeds.

On a black cloud

Drunk with poppy you travel

The nocturnal pond,

The starry sky.

Always the sister's moony voice sounds

Through the spiritual night.

Occidental Song

O the soul's nocturnal wing beat:

Shepherds, we once moved along dusking forests

And the red deer, the green flower and the babbling well followed

Full of humbleness. O, the ancient tone of the cricket,

Blood blooming on the sacrificial stone,

And the cry of a lonely bird over the pond's green stillness.

O, you crusades and glowing tortures

Of the flesh, falling of purple fruit

In the evening garden, where in bygone times the pious disciples walked,

Warriors now, awakened out of wounds and starry dreams.

O, the soft cyan-bundle of night.

O, you times of stillness and golden autumns,

When we peaceful monks pressed the purple grape;

And hill and forest shone all around.

O, you hunts and castles, rest of evening,

When in his chamber man pondered the righteous,

Struggled in mute prayer for God's living head.

O, the bitter hour of decline,

When we behold a stony countenance in black waters.

But in radiance the lovers lift the silver eyelids:

O n e  gender. Incense flows from rosy pillows

And the sweet song of the resurrected.

Transfiguration

When evening appears

A blue countenance quietly leaves you.

A small bird sings in the tamarind tree.

A soft monk

Folds the deceased hands.

A white angel haunts Mary.

A nocturnal wreath

Of violets, corn and purple grapes

Is the year of the beholder.

By your feet

The graves of the dead open

When you lay the forehead in the silver hands.

Silently the autumn moon

Dwells upon your mouth,

Dark song drunk with poppy juice;

Blue flower,

That quietly sounds in yellowed stones.

Foehn

Blind lament in the wind, moony winter days,

Childhood, quietly the steps fade near black hedge,

Long evening bells.

Quietly the white night approaches,

Transforms pain and worriment into purple dreams

Of stony living,

So that the thorny sting will never leave the rotting body.

Deep in slumber, the anxious soul heaves a sigh,

Deep the wind in broken trees,

And the lamenting figure

Of the mother staggers through the lonely forest

Of this speechless grief; nights

Filled with tears, fiery angels.

Silverly a childlike skeleton smashes on bleak wall.

The Wanderer

Always the white night leans on the hill,

Where the poplar towers in silver tones,

Stars and stones are.

Asleep, the footbridge arches over the flooding brook,

A deceased countenance follows the boy,

Sickle moon in the rosy ravine

The eulogizing shepherds far away. In old rocks

The toad gazes out of crystalline eyes,

The blooming wind awakens, the birdcall of the deathlike man,

And the footsteps quietly turn green in the forest.

This reminds of tree and animal. Slow stages of moss;

And the moon,

That sinks glowing in sad waters.

The other one returns again and walks on the green shore,

Swings in a black gondola through the decayed city.

Karl Kraus

White pontiff of truth,
Crystalline voice in which God's icy breath dwells,
Angry magician,
Under whose flaming coat the armor of the warrior rattles.

To the Muted

O, the insanity of the large city, when in the evening

The stunted trees stare at the black wall,

The spirit of evil gazes from a silver mask;

Light dislodges the stony night with a magnetic scourge.

O, the rapt sound of evening bells.

Whore, who in icy shudders bears a dead babe.

Raging, God's wrath whips the forehead of the possessed,

Purple pestilence, hunger that breaks green eyes.

O, the horrible laughter of gold.

But muter humanity calmlybleeds in a dark cave,

Assembles the redeeming head out of hard metals.

Passion

When Orpheus silverly stirs the lyre,

Lamenting a dead shape in the evening garden,

Who are you resting under high trees?

The lament rustles the autumnal reeds,

The blue pond,

Dying away under greening trees

And following the shadow of the sister;

Dark love

Of a wild race,

From which the day rushes away on golden wheels.

Silent night.

Under sinister firs

Two wolves mixed their blood

In stony embrace; a golden shape,

The cloud lost itself over the footbridge,

Patience and silence of childhood.

Again the tender corpse encounters

By the Triton pond

Slumbering in its hyacinthine hair.

That the cool head would finally burst!

Because always a blue deer follows,

An eyeing shape under dusking trees,

The soft insanity

Of these darker paths,

Waking and moved by nocturnal harmonies;

Or the string-play sounded

Full of dark ecstasy

At the cool feet of the penitent woman

In the stony city.

Seven-song of Death

Spring dusks bluish: under sucking trees

A dark shape wanders into evening and decline,

Listening to the blackbird's soft lament.

Silently the night appears, a bleeding deer,

That slowly sinks down at the hill.

In moist air blossoming apple branches sway,

Labyrinthine shapes loosen silverly,

Dying away from nocturnal eyes; falling stars;

Soft song of childhood.

Appearing more the sleeper descended the black forest,

And a blue spring murmured from the ground,

So that the other one quietly lifted pale eyelids

Over his snowy countenance;

And the moon chased a red animal

From its cave;

And in sighs the dark lament of women died.

More radiant, the white stranger lifted the hands

Toward his star;

Silently a dead shape leaves the decayed house.

O the putrefied figure of man: formed from cold metals,

Night and terror of sunken forests

And the singeing wilderness of the animal;

Wind lull of the soul.

In a blackish boat the other one rode down shimmering rivers,

Filled with purple stars, and the greening branches

Sank peacefully over him,

Poppy from silver clouds.

Winter Night

Snow has fallen. After midnight, drunk with purple wine, you leave the dark domain of men, the red flame of their hearth. O the sinisterness!
   Black frost. The earth is hard, the air tastes of bitterness. Your stars close into evil signs.
   With petrified steps you tramp along the railroad embankment, with round eyes, like a soldier who storms a black entrenchment. Avanti!
   Bitter snow and moon!
   A red wolf, which an angel chokes. Your legs rattle in stride like blue ice and a smile full of sadness and pride has petrified your face and the forehead pales before the lust of frost;
   or it bends silently over the sleep of a watchman, who sank down in his wooden hut.
   Frost and smoke. A white star-shirt burns the bearing shoulders and God's vultures mangle your metallic heart.
   O the stony hill. Still and forgotten the cool body melts in silver snow.
   Black is the sleep. The ear follows long the paths of the stars in the ice.
   At the awakening the church bells rang in the village. Silverly from the eastern gate the rosy day stepped.

Song of the Departed

In Venice

Stillness in nocturnal room.

Silverly the candlestick flickers

Before the singing breath

Of the lonely one;

Enchanting rose-clouds.

Blackish swarm of flies

Darkens the stony room

And the head of the homeless one

Stares from the agony

Of the golden day.

Motionless the sea falls in night.

Star and blackish travel

Vanished by the canal.

Child, your sickly smile

Followed me quietly during sleep.

Limbo

By autumnal walls, there shadows seek

At the hill the sounding gold

Grazing evening clouds

In the rest of withered sycamores.

This time breathes darker tears,

Damnation, since the dreamer's heart

Overflows with purple afterglow,

The gloom of the smoking city;

From the cemetery a golden coolness drifts after

The walking man, the stranger,

As if a tender corpse followed in the shadow.

Quietly the stone building rings;

The garden of the orphans, the dark hospital,

A red ship in the canal.

Dreaming in the darkness

Rotting people rise and sink

And from blackish gates

Angels with cold foreheads emerge;

Blueness, the death laments of the mothers.

Through their long hair

A fiery wheel rolls, the round day

Earth's agony without end.

Utensils molder in cool rooms

Without meaning, with bony hands

Unholy childhood

Gropes in the blueness after fairy tales,

The fat rat gnaws door and chest,

A heart

Grows stiff in snowy stillness.

Purple curses of hunger reverberate

In putrefying darkness,

The black swords of the lie,

As if a brazen gate slammed shut.

The Sun

Daily the yellow sun comes over the hill.

Beautiful is the forest, the dark animal,

Man; hunter or shepherd.

Reddish the fish rises in the green pond.

Under the round sky

The fisherman quietly rides the blue boat.

Slowly the grape ripens, the corn.

When the day inclines silently,

A good and evil is prepared.

When night comes,

The wanderer quietly lifts the heavy eyelids;

The sun breaks out of a sinister ravine.

Song of a Captive Blackbird
   For Ludwig von Ficker

Dark breathe in the green branches.

Small blue flowers hover around the countenance

Of the lonely one, the golden step

Dying under the olive tree.

Night flutters up with drunken wing.

So quietly humility bleeds,

Dew that slowly drips from blossoming thorn.

The compassion of radiant arms

Embraces a breaking heart.

Summer

In the evening the cuckoo's lament
Silences in the forest.
The corn bends deeper,
The red poppy.

Black thunderstorm threatens
Over the hill.
The old song of the cricket
Dies off in the field.

The leaves of the chestnut
Never stir.
On the spiral stair
Your gown rustles.

Silently the candle glows
In the dark room;
A silver hand
Extinguished it;

Wind lull, starless night.

End of Summer

The green summer has become

So quiet, your crystalline countenance.

By the evening pond the flowers died,

A frightened call of a blackbird.

Futile hope of life. Already the swallow

In the house prepares for the journey

And the sun sinks at the hill;

The night already beckons to the starry journey.

Silence of villages; the abandoned forests

Resound all around. Heart,

Now bend more lovingly

Over the calm sleeping woman.

The green summer has become

So quiet; and the stranger's footstep

Rings through the silver night.

Would a blue deer remember his path,

The harmony of his spiritual years!

Year

Dark stillness of childhood. Under greening ash trees

The meekness of the bluish view grazes; golden rest.

A dark shape is charmed by the scent of violets; swaying ears of corn

In the evening, seed and the golden shadows of gloom.

The carpenter trims the beams; in the dusking valley

The mill grinds; a purple mouth swells in hazel leaves,

Masculine bent red over silent waters.

Autumn is quiet, the spirit of the forest; a golden cloud

Follows the lonely one; the black shadow of the grandson.

Ending in a stony room; under old cypress trees

The nightly images of tears are gathered in a well;

Golden eye of the beginning, dark patience of the end.

1

Moon, as if a dead shape would step

From a blue cave,

And many blossoms fall

Across the rock path.

Silverly a sick shape weeps

By the evening pond,

In a black boat

Lovers have died crossing over.

Or the steps of Elis

Ring through the grove,

The hyacinthine,

Again fading under oaks.

O the boy's figure

Formed from crystalline tears,

Nocturnal shadows.

Jagged lightning illuminates the temple,

Always-cool,

When by the greening hill

Spring-thunderstorm resounds.

2

So quiet are the green forests
Of our homeland,

The crystalline wave

Dying on a decayed wall

And we have wept in sleep;

Wandering with hesitant steps

Along the thorny hedge,

Singers in the summer evening,

In holy rest

Of the far away radiant vineyard;

Shadows now in the cool lap

Of night, mourning eagles.

So quietly a moony beam closes

The purple stigmata of gloom.

3

You mighty cities

Built from stone

On the plain!

So speechless

The homeless one follows

The wind with dark forehead,

Bleak trees by the hill.

You widely dusking rivers!

In storm clouds

The scary afterglow

Frightens enormously.

You dying people!

Pale wave

Breaking on the beach of night,

Falling stars.

Springtime of the Soul

Outcry in sleep; through black alleys the wind falls,

The blue of spring beckons through breaking branches,

Purple night-dew and stars extinguish all around.

Greenish the river dawns, silverly the old avenues

And the towers of the city. O soft drunkenness

In the gliding boat and the dark calls of the blackbird

In childish gardens. Already, the rosy veil thins.

Solemnly the waters murmur. O the moist shadows of the floodplain,

The striding animal; greening shapes, flowering branches

Touch the crystal forehead; shimmering swaying boat.

Quietly the sun sounds in the rose-colored clouds by the hill.

Great is the stillness of the fir forest, the serious shadows at the river.

Purity! Purity! Where are the terrible paths of death,

Of grey stony silence, the rocks of the night

And the peaceless shadows? Radiant sun-abyss.

Sister, when I found you at the lonely clearing

Of the forest, and it was midday and the silence of the animal great;

Whiteness under wild oak, and the thorn bloomed silver.

Enormous dying and the singing flame in the heart.

Darker the waters flow around the beautiful play of fishes.

Hour of mourning, silent vision of the sun;

The soul is a strange shape on earth. Spiritually blueness

Dusks over the pruned forest; and a dark bell rings

Long in the village; peaceful escort.

Silently the myrtle blooms over the white eyelids of the dead one.

Quietly the waters sound in the sinking afternoon

And the wilderness on the bank greens more darkly; joy in the rosy wind;

The brother's soft song by the evening hill.

In Darkness

The soul silences the blue springtime.

Under moist evening branches

The forehead of lovers sank in shudders.

O the greening cross. In dark conversation

Man and woman knew each other.

Along the bleak wall

The lonely one wanders with his stars.

Over the moon-brightened forest ways

The wilderness

Of forgotten hunts sank; gaze of blue

Breaks from decayed rocks.

Song of the Departed
   To Karl Borromaeus Heinrich

The flight of birds is full of harmonies. The green forests

In the evening have gathered to more silent huts;

The crystal meadows of the doe.

A dark shape calms the ripple of the brook, the moist shadows,

And the flowers of summer, which beautifully ring in the wind.

Already the forehead of the pondering man dusks.

And a small lamp shines, the goodness in his heart

And the peace of the meal; because bread and wine are sanctified

By God's hands, and out of nocturnal eyes

The brother silently gazes at you, so that he rests from thorny wanderings.

O the dwelling in the soulful blueness of the night.

Lovingly the silence in the room also embraces the shadows of the ancestors,

The purple martyrs, lament of a mighty race,

That now dies piously in the lonely grandchild.

Because from black minutes of insanity the suffering/enduring one

Always awakens more radiant at the petrified threshold

And the cool blueness embraces him enormously and the bright end of autumn,

The still house and the telling of the forest,

Measure and law and the moony paths of the departed.

Dream and Derangement

Dream and Derangement

In the evening the father became an old man; in dark rooms the countenance of the mother petrified and the curse of the degenerated race weighed on the boy. Sometimes he remembered his childhood, fulfilled with sickness, terror and eclipse, secret games in the star-garden, or feeding the rats in the dusking courtyard. From the blue mirror the narrow figure of the sister stepped and he fell as if dead into darkness. At night his mouth burst open like a red fruit and stars gleamed over his speechless grief. His dreams fulfilled the ancient house of the fathers. In the evening he liked to walk over the decayed cemetery, or he watched the corpses in the dusking crypts, the green stains of rot on their beautiful hands. At the gate of the monastery he asked for a piece of bread; the shadow of a black horse jumped out of darkness and frightened him. When he lay in his cool bed, unspeakable tears overcame him. But there was no one who might have put a hand on his forehead. When autumn came, he walked, a clairvoyant, in brown floodplain. O, the hours of wild ecstasy, the evenings by the green river, the hunting. O, the soul which quietly sang the song of the yellowed reed; fiery piety. Silently and long he looked into the starry eyes of the toad, felt with trembling hands the coolness of the old stone and consulted with the revered legend of the blue well. O, the silver fish and fruits which fell from crippled trees. The chords of his steps fulfilled him with pride and contempt of men. On the way home, he met an uninhabited palace. Decayed gods stood in the garden, mourning in the evening. But it seemed to him: here I lived forgotten years. An organ choral fulfilled him with God's shivers. But in a dark cave he spent his days, lied and stole and hid, a flaming wolf before the white countenance of the mother. O, the hour when with a stony mouth he sank down in the star-garden, the shadow of the murderer came over him. With a purple forehead he walked into the moor and God's wrath castigated his metal shoulders; o, the birches in the storm; the dark animals which avoided his deranged paths. Hate burned his heart, lust, when in the green summer garden he violated the silent child and recognized in the radiating his own deranged countenance. Woe, in the evening at the window, when out of purple flowers a grayish skeleton, death stepped. O, you towers and bells; and the shadows of night fell stony on him.

No one loved him. Lie and lechery burned his head in dusking rooms. The blue rustle of a woman's dress made him stiffen into a column and the nocturnal figure of his mother stood in the doorway. Above his head the shadow of evil rose up. O, you nights and stars. In the evening he walked past the mountain with the cripple; the rosy splendor of the afterglow lay on the icy peak and his heart quietly rang in the dusk. The stormy firs sank heavily upon them and the red hunter stepped out of the forest. When night came his heart broke crystal-like and sinisterness beat his forehead. Under bleak oak trees he strangled a wild cat with icy hands. Lamenting to his right, the white figure of an angel appeared, and in the darkness the shadow of the cripple grew. But he lifted a rock and threw it at the other so that he fled howling and in the shadow of the tree the soft countenance of the angel faded away sighing. Long he lay on a stony acre and gazed with astonishment at the golden tent of the stars. Chased by bats, he fell away into darkness. Breathless he entered the decayed house. In the courtyard he, a wild animal, drank the well's blue water until he became cold. Feverish, he sat upon the icy stairs, raging against God, that he might die. O, the grey countenance of terror when he raised the round eyes over a dove's slit throat. Shooing over strange stairs, he met a Jewish girl and he grabbed at her black hair and he seized her mouth. Hostile shapes followed him through sinister streets and an iron clinking tore his ear. Along autumnal walls he, an acolyte, silently followed the silent priest; drunkenly he breathed in the scarlet of his reverend vestment under sere trees. O, the decayed disk of the sun. Sweet torments consumed his flesh. In a deserted passageway his own bleeding figure covered with refuge appeared to him. He loved the noble works of stone more deeply; the tower that nightly storms the blue star-sky with hellish grimaces; the cool grave in which man's fiery heart is preserved. Woe, to the unspeakable guilt signified by it. But when he walked along the autumnal river under bleak trees pondering something blazing, a flaming daemon appeared to him in hairy coat, the sister. Awaking the stars expired above their heads.

O of the cursed race. When in maculate rooms every destiny has been fulfilled, death enters the house in moldering steps. O, that it were spring outdoors and a lovely bird was singing in the blossoming tree. But grayish the scanty green withers around the windows of the nocturnal ones and bleeding hearts still ponder evil. O, the dusking spring paths of the pondering. More righteously he rejoices in the blossoming hedge, the countryman's young seed, and the singing bird, God's soft creature; the evening bell and the beautiful community of men. So that he might forget his fate and the thorny sting. Freely the brook grows, where silverly his foot wanders, and a telling tree rustles above his deranged head. Thus he lifts the snake with lank hand and in fiery tears his heart melted away. The silence of the forest is sublime, greening darkness, and the mossy animals fluttering up when night comes. O the shiver when every being knows its guilt, walks thorny paths. Thus he found the white figure of the child in the thorn-bush bleeding for the coat of its bridegroom. But he stood buried in his steely hair mute and suffering before her. O the radiant angels, whom the purple night wind dispersed. Nightlong he dwelled in a crystalline cave and leprosy grew silverly on his forehead. A shadow, he walked down the mule track under autumn stars. Snow fell, and blue sinisterness filled the house. The harsh voice of the father called out like a blind man and evoked dread. Woe of the bowed appearance of women. Under stiffed hands the terrified race's progeny and utensils decayed. A wolf tore the firstborn and the sisters fled into dark gardens to bony old men. A deranged seer, the other one sang along the decayed walls and God's wind engulfed his voice. O, the lust of death. O you children of a dark race. Silverly the evil flowers of the blood glimmer on the other one's temple, the cold moon in his broken eyes. O, of the nocturnal ones; o, of the cursed.

Deep is the slumber in dark poisons, fulfilled with stars and the white countenance of the mother, the stony one. Bitter is death, the fare of the guilt-laden; in the brown branches of the family tree the earthen faces decayed grinning. But quietly the other one sang in the green shadow of the elderberry, when he woke from evil dreams; sweet playmate, a rosy angel, approached him, so that he, a soft deer, slumbered into the night; and he saw the star-countenance of purity. The sunflowers sank golden over the garden fence when the summer came. O, the diligence of bees and the green leaves of the walnut tree; the thunderstorms passing by. Silverly the poppy bloomed also, bore in green bud our nocturnal star-dreams. O, how silent the house was when the father passed away into darkness. The fruit ripened purple on the tree and the gardener moved his hard hands; o the hairy signs in the radiant sun. But silently in the evening the shadow of the dead man entered the grieving family circle and his step sounded crystalline over the green meadow before the forest. Muted ones, those gathered around the table; dying ones with waxen hands they broke the bread, the bleeding. Woe of the sister's stony eyes, when at the meal her insanity appeared on the brother's forehead, when under the mother's suffering hands the bread turned to stone. O, of the putrefied ones, when with silver tongues they silenced hell. Thus the lamps in the cool room died out and through purple masks the suffering humans looked at each other silently. The night long rain poured down, and recreated the meadow. In thorny wilderness the dark one followed the yellowed paths in the corn, the song of the lark and the soft stillness of green branches, so that he might find peace. O, you villages and mossy stages, glowing sight. But bonily the steps stagger over sleeping snakes at the forest edge and the ear always follows the raving scream of the vulture. In the evening he found a stony solitude, a dead man's escort into the dark house of the father. Purple cloud covered his head, so that he silently attacked his own blood and effigy, a moony countenance; stony sank away into emptiness, when in a broken mirror a dying youth, the sister appeared; the night engulfed the cursed race.

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