by Georg Trakl
The blind strew incense into festering wounds.
Red-golden gowns; torchlight, singing of psalms;
And girls who embrace the Lord’s body like poison.
Figures stride wax-stiffened through embers and smoke.
A dry-boned fool leads the lepers in a midnight dance
Gardens of outlandish adventure;
Distortions; grotesque flower faces, laughter, ogres
And rolling stars in black thorny briars.
O poverty, beggars’ broth, bread and sweet leek;
Life’s daydream in a hut at the forest edge.
Grey hardens the sky above the yellow fields
And, according to custom, the evening bells sing out.
Night Song
Breath unmoved. An animal’s face
Stiffens before blue, its holiness.
Mighty is the silence in stone;
Mask of a night bird. Soft triad
Dies away into one. Elai! Your countenance
Bows speechless over bluish waters.
O! you silent mirrors of truth.
On the elfin-boned temple of the lonely one
Appears the reflection of fallen angels.
Helian
I
In the solitary hours of the spirit
Beautiful it is to walk in the sun,
By the yellow walls of summer.
Quietly our footsteps ring in the grass; but always
The son of Pan sleeps in the grey marble.
Evenings on the terrace drunk we were on brown wine.
Reddish glows the peach in the leaves;
Soft sonata, cheerful laughter.
Beautiful is the stillness of night.
On the dark plain
We meet ourselves with shepherds and white stars.
When autumn comes
A sober clarity enters the grove.
Soothed, we wander beside red walls
And round eyes follow the flight of birds.
At evening white water sinks down in the funeral urns.
In bare branches heaven rejoices.
In pure hands the countryman bears bread and wine
And peacefully ripens the fruit in the sunny pantry.
O how earnest is the countenance of the dear deceased.
Yet the soul delights in righteous contemplation.
II
Immense is the silence of the ruined garden,
When the young novice wreathes his brow with brown leaves,
His breath drinks icy gold.
Hands stir the age of bluish waters
Or in cold night the white cheeks of the sisters.
Soft and harmonious is a walk past friendly rooms,
Where solitude is and the rustle of the maple,
Where perhaps the thrush still sings.
Beautiful is man and emerging in darkness,
When marvelling he moves his limbs,
And his eyes roll silently in crimson hollows.
At vespers the stranger is lost to black November destruction,
Beneath rotting boughs, by walls filled with leprosy,
Where the holy brother earlier walked,
Lost in the soft string play of his madness,
O how lonely dies the evening wind.
Dying away, the head bows down in the olive tree’s darkness.
III
Harrowing is the downfall of the race.
At this hour the eyes of the beholder
Fill with the gold of his stars.
At evening sinks the dying bell, that chimes no more,
The decay of black walls along the square,
The dead soldier calls to prayer.
A pale angel
The son steps into the empty house of his Fathers.
The sisters have gone far away to white old men.
At night the sleeper found them beneath the pillars in the hallway,
Returned from mournful pilgrimages.
O how their hair stiffens with muck and worms,
As with silver feet he stands there,
And, deceased, they step from bare rooms.
O you psalms in fiery midnight rains,
When with nettles the servants scourged the gentle eyes,
The childlike fruits of the elder
Incline astonished over an empty grave.
Softly rolls the yellowed moon
Above the young man’s fever sheets,
Before the silence of winter comes.
IV
An exalted destiny muses down Kidron,
Where the cedar, a gentle creature,
Unfolds beneath the blue brow of the father,
A shepherd leads his flock over the meadow at night.
Or there are cries in sleep,
When in the grove a brazen angel confronts man,
The flesh of the saint melts on the glowing grill.
Round huts of clay the purple vines entwine,
Sheaves of yellowed corn resounding,
The hum of bees, the flight of cranes.
At evening on rocky paths the resurrected meet.
In black waters the lepers are mirrored;
Or they part their muck-spattered robes
Weeping to the balsam wind that wafts down from the rosy hill.
Through the alleys of night grope slender servant girls,
To seek the loving shepherd.
On Saturdays gentle singing comes from the huts.
May the song also remember the boy,
His insanity, and white temples, his departing,
The decayed, who bluishly opens eyes.
O how grief-stricken is this reunion.
V
Steps of madness in black rooms,
Shadows of old men under the open door,
When Helian’s soul regards itself in the rosy mirror
And from his brow snow and leprosy fall.
On walls the stars have died out
And the white forms of light.
From carpets rise the bones of graves,
On the hill the silence of crosses decayed,
Incense sweetness on the crimson night wind.
O you shattered eyes in black mouths,
When the grandson in gentle derangement
Muses alone on the darker ending,
The silent god lowers blue eyelids over him.
SEBASTIAN IN DREAM, 1915
SEBASTIAN IN DREAM
Childhood
The elder bush heavy with fruit; calmly childhood dwelt
In a blue cave. Over the timeworn path,
Where brown now the wild grass sighs,
Silent branches muse; the rustle of leaves
As when blue water sounds in the rock.
Gentle is the blackbird’s lament. Speechless, a shepherd
Follows the sun that rolls from the autumn hill.
A blue moment is only more soul.
A shy deer appears at the forest’s edge, and peacefully
Rest the old bells and dark hamlets in the depths.
More pious, you know the meaning of the dark years,
Coolness and autumn in lonely rooms;
And shining steps ring out in holy blueness.
Softly rattles an open window, tears come
At the sight of the decayed churchyard on the hill,
Memories of legends retold; but sometimes the soul brightens,
When it thinks of merry people, days of spring dark-gold.
Song of Hours
With dark glances the lovers gaze on each other,
The blond, the radiant. In glaring gloom
Their yearning arms delicately entwine.
Crimson broke the blessed one’s mouth. Round eyes
Mirror the dark-gold of the spring afternoon,
Border and blackness of the forest, evening angst in the green;
Perhaps unutterable flight of birds, the unborn’s
Path by darkened villages, lonely summers
; And sometimes out of decayed blueness a dead one steps.
Softly the yellow corn rustles in the field.
Hard is life and steely the countryman swings the scythe,
The carpenter joins the mighty beams.
Crimson turn the leaves in autumn; the monastic soul
Wanders through joyful days; ripe is the grape
And festive the air in the great open farmyards.
Sweeter the scent of yellowed fruit; soft is the laughter
Of the joyful, music and dance in the cellars’ shadow;
In the dusking garden step and silence of the dead boy.
On the Way
At evening they carried the stranger to the chamber of the dead;
An odour of tar; the red plane tree’s soft rustling;
Dark flight of jackdaws, a guard draws up in the square.
The sun has sunk into black linen; ever this bygone evening returns.
In the next room the sister plays a Schubert sonata.
So softly sinks her smile into the decayed fountain,
Which in the twilight rustles blue. O how old is our lineage.
Someone whispers below in the garden; someone has departed this black heaven.
From the dresser, scent of apples. Grandmother lights the golden candles.
Oh, how mild is autumn. Softly our footsteps ring out in the old park
Beneath high trees. O, how sober is the hyacinthine face of twilight.
The blue spring at your feet, mysterious your mouth’s red silence,
Made sombre by the leaves’ slumber, dark-gold of decayed sunflowers.
Your lids are heavy with poppy and dream softly against my brow.
Gentle bells quiver in the breast. A blue cloud
Your face has sunk over me in the twilight.
A song for guitar rings out from an unknown tavern,
The wild elder bushes there, a long bygone November day,
Familiar steps on the dusking stairway, the sight of beams turned brown,
An open window, at which a sweet hope lingered—
Unutterable it all is, O God one falls to one’s knees overwhelmed.
Oh, how dark is this night. A crimson flame
Died at my mouth. In the stillness
The anxious soul’s lonely string music dies away.
Leave be, when drunk with wine the head sinks into the gutter.
Landscape
(version 2)
September evening; sorrowfully sound the dark calls of shepherds
Through the village at dusk; fire sparks in the forge.
Mightily a black horse rears up; the hyacinthine locks of the maid
Snatch after the fervour of its crimson nostrils.
Softly stiffens at the forest edge the cry of the hind
And the yellow blooms of autumn
Bow speechless over the pond’s blue countenance.
In red flame a tree burned, the bats’ dark faces flutter up.
To the Boy Elis
Elis, when the blackbird calls in the black wood,
This is your decline.
Your lips drink the coolness of the blue rock spring.
Leave be, when quietly your brow bleeds
Bygone legends
And the dark interpretation of bird flight.
But you walk with soft steps into the night,
Which hangs heavy with purple grapes
And move your arms more beautifully in the blue.
A thorn bush sounds,
Where your moon eyes are.
O, how long, Elis, have you been dead.
Your body is a hyacinth,
Into which a monk dips his waxen fingers.
A black cavern is our silence,
From which at times a gentle animal steps
And slowly lowers heavy lids.
On your temples black dew drips,
The final gold of failed stars.
Elis
I
Perfect is the stillness of this golden day.
Under ancient oaks
You appear, Elis, a restful one with round eyes.
Their blueness mirrors the slumber of lovers.
Upon your mouth
Their rosy sighs died out.
At evening the fisherman hauled in his heavy nets.
A good shepherd
Leads his flock by the forest edge.
Oh how righteous, Elis, are all your days.
Softly sinks
On bare walls the olive tree’s blue stillness,
An old man’s dark song died away.
A golden boat
Sways, Elis, your heart against a lonely sky.
II
In Elis’ breast a gentle bell chime sounds
At evening,
When his head sinks down upon the black pillow.
A blue deer
Bleeds softly in the thorny thicket.
A brown tree stands apart there;
Its blue fruits have fallen.
Symbols and stars
Sink softly in the evening pond.
Behind the hill winter has come.
Blue doves
Nightly drink the icy sweat
That runs from Elis’ crystal brow.
Forever
On black walls God’s lonely wind resounds.
Hohenburg
(version 2)
No one in the house. Autumn in rooms;
Moon-bright sonata
And awakening at dusk by the forest edge.
Always you ponder the white countenance of man
Far from the turmoil of time;
Over a dreaming form, green branches bow willingly,
Cross and evening
With crimson arms the resounding one is enfolded by his star,
Which rises to windows unlived in.
Thus the stranger trembles in darkness,
As he softly raises lids over a human form,
Distant, the wind’s silver voice in the hall.
Sebastian in Dream
For Adolf Loos
Mother bore the babe in the white moon,
In the walnut’s shadow, the ancient elder,
Drunk on poppy sap, the lament of the thrush;
And silently
In sympathy a bearded face bowed over her
Quiet in the dark of windows; and old household tools
Of the fathers
Lay mouldering; love and autumnal reverie.
Dark too was the day of the year, mournful childhood,
When softly the boy descended to cool waters, silver fishes,
Calm and countenance;
When stonily he launched himself before black horses raving,
In the grey night his star rose over him;
Or holding the icy hand of his mother at evening
He passed through St Peter’s autumn churchyard,
A delicate corpse lay still in the darkness of the chamber
And the other raised cold lids over him.
But he was a little bird in bare branches,
Into November evening long the bell sounded,
The Father’s stillness, when in sleep he descended the darkening spiral stair.
II
Peace of the soul. Lonely winter evening,
The dark shapes of shepherds by the ancient pond;
Infant in the hut of straw; O how softly
Into black fever his face sank down.
Holy night.
Or, holding the father’s hard hand, in silence
He ascended dark Calvary.
And in shadowy rock niches
The blue form of man passed through his legend,
From the wound beneath his heart the crimson blood flowed out.
O how softly rose the cross in the darkness of his soul.
Love; when in black corners the snow melted,
Cheerfully a blue breeze caught in the ancient elder,
In the walnut’s vault of shadow;
; And gently to the boy appeared his rosy angel.
Joy; when in cool rooms an evening sonata sang out,
From brown beams of wood
A blue moth crept from its silver chrysalis.
O the nearness of death. From stony walls
A yellow head bowed down, silent the child,
As in that March the moon decayed.
III
Rosy Easter bell in the burial vault of night
And the silver voices of the stars,
As in shudders, a sombre madness sank from the sleeper’s brow.
O such calm a stroll down the blue river
Musing on that forgotten, when from verdant boughs
The thrush calls a stranger into decline.
Or in the bony hand of the old man
He went at evening to the decayed city walls
And in a black coat the other bore a rosy babe,
In the walnut’s shadow the spirit of evil appeared.
Groping over the green steps of summer. O how softly
The garden decayed into brown autumn stillness,