by Georg Trakl
Where friends find each other after the meal.
Pleasantly the soul listens to the white magician’s tales.
All around the corn swishes, the scythes reap beyond noon.
With patience hard life grows silent in the huts;
The stall lantern lights the linden sleep of cows.
Drunk with breezes, lids soon lower
And softly open to the unknown signs of stars.
Endymion emerges from the darkness of oaks
And bends low over mournful waters.
Dream of Evil
Sound of a gong, dying out—
A lover awakens in black rooms
Cheek by flames that flicker at the glass.
On the river, flash rope, sail and mast.
A monk, a pregnant woman in the throng.
Guitars strum, the shimmer of scarlet gowns.
Chestnuts sultry wither in golden radiance;
Black looms the churches’ mournful pageantry.
From pale masks peers the spirit of evil.
A square darkens morbid and terrible;
Whispers well up on the islands at nightfall.
Lepers, perhaps rotting away at night
Read confused signs from bird flight.
Trembling, siblings behold each other in the park.
Spiritual Song
Signs, rare embroidery
Of a fluttering flower border.
God’s blue breath wafts
Into the garden room,
Entering joyfully.
A cross rises up in wild vines.
From the village, hear rejoicing,
The gardener scythes by the wall,
Softly an organ goes,
Stirring sound and golden glow,
Sound and glow.
Love blesses bread and wine.
Girls also come
And to the last the cock crows.
Gently a rotten trellis goes
And in rose garland and rows,
Rose rows
Maria rests, white and delicate.
A beggar there against the old stone
As if dead through his prayer,
Softly from the hill a shepherd goes
And an angel sings in the grove,
Close by in the grove
Lulls the infants to sleep.
In Autumn
The sunflowers shine by the fence
The sick sit silently in the sunlight.
In the field the labouring women sing,
And there the cloister bells chime.
The birds tell a distant fable,
And there the cloister bells chime.
Softly sounds the violin from the courtyard.
Today they tread the brown wine.
Man shows himself blithe and benign.
Today they tread the brown wine.
Wide open are the chambers of the dead
And sublimely painted by sunshine.
Towards Evening My Heart
At evening you hear the shriek of bats.
Two black horses leap in the meadow.
The red maple rustles.
To the wayfarer on the road the little tavern appears.
Wonderful to taste the nuts and new wine.
Wonderful: to lurch drunkenly through the dusking wood.
From black branches grief-stricken bells are sounding.
On your face the dew drips.
The Peasants
By the window, green and red resound.
In the smoke-blackened, low hall
The underlings and servants sit for the meal;
And they pour the wine and break the bread.
In the deep silence of noon
A meagre word occasionally falls.
On and on the fields shimmer
And the sky leaden and vast.
Hideous glow the embers in the hearth
And the swarm of flies hums.
The servants listen dull-witted and dumb
And at their temples the blood pounds.
And sometimes glances meet, lust-filled,
When a feral haze drifts through the room.
A farmhand monotonously says the prayer
And cock crow from under the door.
Again into the field. A horror often seizes
Them in the billowing roar of the corn
And back and forth, swinging, clinking
The scythes in ghostly rhythm.
All Souls
Little men, little women, sad wayfarers,
Today they scatter flowers blue and red
On their vaults so furtively bright.
Like poor dolls they are before death.
O! How full of fear and humility they seem,
Like shades stood behind black bushes.
In the autumn wind the weeping lament of the unborn,
And you see the lights go astray.
The sighs of lovers waft through the branches
And over there the mother decays with the child.
Unreal seems the roundelay of the living
Strangely scattered on the evening wind.
Their life is so confused, heavy with dull afflictions.
Have pity God on the hell and agony of the women,
And these lamentations of death without hope.
The lonely roam silently in halls of stars.
Melancholy
(version 3)
Bluish shadows. O you dark eyes,
That, gliding past, long behold me.
Guitar sounds gently escort autumn
In the garden, leached into brown lees.
Death’s grave sombreness is prepared
With nymph hands, at red breasts suckle
Mouldered lips and in black lees
The sun-youth’s moist locks glide.
Soul of Life
Decay, that softly darkens the leafage,
Its vast silence dwells in the forest.
Soon a village seems to spectrally incline.
The sister’s mouth whispers in black branches.
The lonely one will soon slip away,
Perhaps a shepherd on dark pathways.
A beast steps softly from the arcade of trees,
While the lids lift open to divinity.
Beautifully the blue river flows down,
At evening clouds reveal themselves;
The soul too in seraphic silence.
Ephemeral forms go under.
Transfigured Autumn
Prodigiously ends the year
With golden wine and garden fruits.
Wonderful silence of surrounding woods
Companions they are to the solitary.
So the peasant says: it is good.
You evening bells long and faint
Still grant us cheerful courage at the end.
A migration of birds greets us on the journey.
It is the mellow season of love.
In a boat down the blue river
How beautiful image upon image—
That sinks down in rest and silence.
Forest Nook
To Karl Minnich
Brown chestnuts. Gently drift the old folk
Into evening’s stillness; tenderly the beautiful leaves fade.
In the churchyard the blackbird jests with the dead cousin,
The fair-haired tutor is escort to Angela.
Pure images of death watch from church windows;
But a bloody plot seems more mournful and sombre.
Today the gate stayed locked. The sexton has the key.
In the garden the sister talks amicably to ghosts.
In old cellars the wine ripens golden, clear.
Sweet scent of apples. Not far distant, jubilance gleams.
On long evenings the children love hearing fairy tales;
Gold, often truth comes out of gentle madness.
The blue brims with mignonettes; candlelight in rooms.
The humble have their place m
ade ready.
Along the forest edge glides a lonely destiny;
Night appears, angel of repose, upon the threshold.
In Winter
The field shines white and cold.
The sky is lonely and vast.
Jackdaws circle above the pond
And the hunter steps down from the wood.
In black treetops a silence lives.
Light of a fire darts from the huts.
Sometimes sleigh bells sound far off
And the grey moon slowly emerges.
Game bleeds gently on the border
And ravens splash in bloody gutters.
Reeds quiver yellow and rise up.
Frost, smoke, a step in the empty copse.
In an Old Album
Always you return, melancholy,
Oh meekness of the lonely soul.
To the end a golden day glows.
With humility the patient one bows before pain
Resounding with melodies and tender madness.
See! It is already dusk.
Again night comes in and a mortal laments
And with it another suffers.
Trembling beneath autumn stars
Yearly the head bows deeper.
Metamorphosis
(version 2)
Along gardens, autumnal, seared red:
Here in stillness is revealed a vigorous life.
The hands of the man bear brown vines,
Whilst in his gaze a gentle pain declines.
At evening: steps pass through black country
Appearing in the silence of red beeches.
A blue animal seeks to incline before death
And grimly an empty garment moulders.
Calmness plays before a tavern,
A countenance is sunk drunkenly in the grass.
Fruits of the elder, flutes mellow and intoxicated,
Washing around woman, scent of mignonettes.
Little Concert
A red, that dreamlike unsettles you—
Through your hands the sun shines.
You feel your heart mad with rapture
Prepare an act in silence.
At noon the flowing of yellow fields.
Barely you still hear the crickets’ song,
The rough swinging of the scythes.
Guileless silent, golden forests.
In the green pond corruption glows.
The fish are quite still. God’s breath
Gently wakens string play in the vapour.
The waters gesture recovery to the leper.
Dedalus’ spirit glides in blue shadows,
An odour of milk in the twigs of the hazel.
Long still you hear the teacher at the violin,
In the empty courtyard the shriek of rats.
In the pitcher by wretched wallpaper
Blossom the cooler colours of violets.
In strife dark voices die out,
Narcissus in the final chord of flutes.
Mankind
Mankind posed before the fire chasms,
Dark brows of warriors, a roll of drums,
Footsteps in blood fog; black irons sound,
Despair, night spent in the dejected brain:
Eve’s shadow comes, the hunt and red coins.
Cloud through which light breaks the last supper.
A gentle silence dwells in bread and wine
And those twelve in number gathered there.
Nightly beneath olive trees they cry out in sleep;
Saint Thomas dips his hand into the wound.
The Walk
I
Afternoon music murmurs in the grove.
In the corn the stern scarecrows turn.
The elder bushes drift off gently by the road;
A house shimmers strange and vague.
In gold hovers the scent of thyme,
On a stone you read a genial sign.
On a pasture children play ball,
Then a tree begins to circle before you.
You dream: the sister combs her blonde tresses,
A friend far distant writes you a letter.
Through grey a rick flies yellowed and crooked
And sometimes you float light and splendid.
II
Time flows. O sweet Helios!
O reflection in the toad pond so sweet and clear;
Into sand gloriously sinks an Eden.
A bush holds the bunting to its breast.
A brother perishes in a cursed land
And your steel eyes are watching him.
In gold there a scent of thyme.
By the hamlet a boy lays a fire.
The lovers glow anew in butterflies
And joyously sway around stone and sign.
Crows flutter up around a foul repast
And your brow rages through soft green.
In the thorn bush a deer softly dies.
A bright day of childhood accompanies you,
Flighty and vague the grey wind
Swills decaying odours through the dusk.
III
An old lullaby causes you anguish.
At the wayside a woman piously feeds her child.
Somnolent, you hear the welling up of her spring.
Through apple-tree branches falls a holy sound.
And bread and wine are sweet after hard labour.
Through fruits your hand gropes silver.
The dead Rachel moves through the fields.
And the green beckons with friendly gestures.
Also blessed the poor maids’ blooming breast,
Who stand, in reverie at the old fountain.
Contented, the solitaries go on peaceful paths
With God’s sinless creatures.
De Profundis
There is a stubble field, where a black rain falls.
There is a brown tree here, which stands alone.
There is a hissing wind that wreathes the empty huts.
How sorrowful this evening.
Beyond the hamlet
The gentle orphan still gathers in the meagre corn.
Round and golden, her eyes graze in the twilight
And her womb awaits the heavenly bridegroom.
Returning home
Shepherds found the sweet remains
Decayed in the thorn bush.
A shadow I am far from darkened villages.
God’s silence
I drank from the spring in the grove.
Onto my brow cold metal steps
Spiders seek my heart.
There is a light that dies in my mouth.
At night I found myself upon a heath,
Thick with filth and stardust.
In the hazel bush
Crystal angels have chimed again.
Trumpets
Beneath trimmed willows, where brown children play
And leaves drift, trumpets sound. Graveyard shudder.
Banners of scarlet plunge through the maple’s grief
Riders along rye fields, desolate mills.
Or shepherds sing at night and stags step
Into the circle of their fire, the grove’s ancient sorrow,
Dancers rise up from a black wall;
Banners of scarlet, laughter, madness, trumpets.
Dusk
In the courtyard, bewitched by twilight’s milky glow,
Through autumn’s browning, gentle invalids glide.
Their waxen-rounded gaze ponders a golden age,
Filled with dreaming, peace and wine.
Their wasting-away spectrally encloses them.
The stars scatter white sorrow.
In the grey filled with delusion and bell chimes,
See, how the horror-stricken are scattered in confusion.
Distorted shapes of ridicule scurry, cowering
Fluttering upon fields black with crosses.
O! Mournful shadows upon walls.
Others flee throu
gh darkening arcades;
And at night plunge from the red shuddering
Of stellar winds like raving maenads.
Smiling Spring
(version 2)
I
Beside the brook, that flows through the yellow fallow field,
The dried reed of last year still stirs.
Sounds glide wonderfully through greyness,
The waft of warm muck drifts by.
From willows catkins hang peacefully in the wind,
Melancholy song a dreaming soldier sings.
A strip of meadow swishes, blown about and sorrowful,
A child stands in silhouette tender and gentle.
The birches there, the black thorn bush,
Also forms flee in smoke dissolving.
Brightly green blooms and one more decays
And toads slept amongst the young leeks.
II
I love you ardently coarse washerwoman,