Surrender to Night
Page 7
Fragrance and melancholy of the ancient elder
When in Sebastian’s shadow the silver voice of the angel died.
On the Moor
(version 3)
Wayfarer in black wind; softly whispers the withered reed
In the stillness of the moor. Against grey skies
A flight of wild fowl passes;
Cross-wise over dark waters.
Pandemonium. In a derelict hut
On black wings, putrefaction flutters up;
Crippled birches sigh in the wind.
Evening in the deserted inn. The gentle melancholy
Of grazing herds enshrouds the way home,
Apparition of night: toads dive from silvery waters.
In Spring
Softly snow sank from dark steps,
In the shade of trees
Lovers lift rosy lids.
Ever the dark calls of the mariner followed by
Star and night;
And softly the oars beat time.
Soon by the decayed wall bloom
Violets,
So calmly greens the temple of the lonely one.
Evening in Lans
(version 2)
Wayfaring through twilit summer
Past sheaves of yellowed corn. Beneath white-washed arches,
Where the swallow flew out and in, we drank the fiery wine.
Beautiful: O melancholy and crimson laughter.
Evening and the dark scents of the green
Our glowing brows cooled with showers.
Over the forest steps silver waters trickle,
Night and speechless a forgotten life.
Friend; leafy footbridges into the village.
On the Mönchsberg
(version 2)
Where in the shadow of autumn elms the decayed path sinks down,
Far from the huts of leaf, sleeping shepherds,
Always the dark form of coolness follows the wayfarer
Over the bridge of bone, the hyacinth voice of the boy,
Softly chanting the forgotten legend of the forests,
And more gently, a sick thing now, the brother’s wild lament.
So a touch of green stirs the knee of the stranger,
The stony head;
Nearer the blue spring murmurs the women’s lament.
Kaspar Hauser Song
To Bessie Loos
Truly he loved the sun, as crimson it sank behind the hill,
The woodland paths, the blackbird singing
The joy of the green.
Earnest was his dwelling in the tree’s shadow
And pure his countenance.
Into his hand God spoke a gentle flame:
O man!
Silently his footfall found the city at evening;
The dark lament of his mouth:
I want to be a horseman.
But bush and beast shadowed him,
House and dusking garden of white men
And his murderer stalked him.
Spring and summer and beautiful the autumn
Of the righteous one, his soft step
Passing the dark rooms of dreamers.
At night he remained alone with his star;
Saw snow falling through bare branches
And in the gloomy passage the murderer’s shadow.
Silver sank the head of the unborn.
By Night
The blueness of my eyes has died out in this night,
The red gold of my heart. O how calmly burned the light.
Your blue cloak enshrouded the sinking one;
Your red mouth sealed the friend’s derangement.
Transformation of Evil
(version 2)
Autumn: black striding at the forest’s edge; minute of silent destruction; beneath the bare tree the leper’s brow hearkens. Long bygone evening, sinking now over mossy steps; November. A bell chimes and the shepherd leads a herd of horses black and red into the village. Beneath hazel bushes the green hunter guts the game. His hands smoked with blood and the beast’s shadow sighs in the foliage above the eyes of the man, brown and taciturn; the forest. Crows that scatter, three. Their flight is like a sonata, replete with fading chords and manly melancholy; softly a golden cloud dissolves. By the mill boys are lighting a fire. Flame is brother to the palest and the other laughs buried in his crimson hair; or it is a place of murder, past which a stony path weaves. The barberries have vanished, year-long it dreams in leaden air beneath the firs; fear, green darkness, the gurgling of a drowning man: out of the starry pond the fisherman draws a huge, black fish, face filled with cruelty and insanity. The voices of the reeds, of quarrelling men behind, the other in a red boat rocks upon autumn waters, dwelling in dark legends of his race and stony eyes opened over nights and virginal terrors. Evil.
What made you stand so still on the decayed stair in the house of your ancestors? Leaden blackness. What do you raise to your eyes with silver hand; and the lids sink down as if drunk with poppy? But through the wall of stone you see the sky of stars, the Milky Way, Saturn; red. Raving, the bare tree knocks against the wall of stone. You on decayed steps: tree, star, stone! You, a blue animal that gently quivers; you, the pale priest who sacrifices it upon the black altar. O your smile in darkness, sad and evil, so that a child turns ashen in sleep. A red flame sprang from your hand and there a night moth was burned. O flute of light, O flute of death. What had you stand so still on the decayed stair in the house of your ancestors? Below at the gate an angel knocks with crystalline finger.
O the hell of sleep; dark valley, little brown garden. At evening softly sound the dead forms. Tiny green flowers scattered round them and their countenance has departed. Or, deceased, it inclines over the cold brow of the murderer in the dark of the hallway; adoration, crimson flame of lust; dying the sleeper fell over black steps into darkness.
Someone left you at the crossroads and you gaze back for a long time. Silver step in the shadow of crippled little apple trees. Crimson glows the fruit amidst the black branches and in the grass the snake sheds its skin. O! the darkness; sweat that emerges on the icy brow and mournful dreams in wine, in the village tavern beneath smoke-blackened beams. You, still wilderness that conjures rosy islands from brown tobacco clouds and draws from within the wild cry of the Griffin, as he hunts around black cliffs in sea, storm and ice. You, a green metal and within a fiery face that will go forth and from the hill of bones and the angel’s flaming fall sing of dark times. O! despair, that with mute cry falls to its knees.
A dead one visits you. From the heart the self-spilt blood runs and in the black eyebrow the unutterable moment rests; dark encounter. You—a crimson moon, as the other appears in the green shade of the olive tree. From this follows eternal night.
AUTUMN OF THE LONELY
In the Park
Ever roaming the old park,
O stillness of flowers yellow and red.
You also mourn, you gentle gods,
And the autumn gold of the elm.
Motionless in the bluish pond rise
The reeds, at evening the thrush falls silent.
O! then you too incline the brow
Before the ancestors’ decayed marble.
A Winter Evening
(version 2)
When snow falls against the window,
Long tolls the evening bell,
For many is the table prepared
And the house is in good order.
Some on their wanderings
Come to the gate by dark pathways.
Golden blooms the tree of grace
Out of the earth’s cool sap.
Wayfarer steps silently inside;
Pain has made stony the threshold.
There in pure radiance
Bread and wine upon the table.
The Cursed
I
Dusk falling. The old women go to the well.
In the dark shadow of the chestnuts a red laughs.
&n
bsp; From a shop flows the perfume of bread
And sunflowers sink over the fence.
By the river the inn murmurs soft and mild.
A guitar hums; jingling of coins.
A halo falls upon that little girl,
Who waits before the glass door gentle and white.
O! blue radiance she awakens in the panes,
Framed by thorns, black and stonily enraptured.
A stooped writer smiles as if insane
Into water that a wild commotion stirs.
II
At evening plague borders her blue vestment
And softly a sinister guest closes the door.
Through the window sinks the maple’s black burden;
A young boy lays the brow in her hand.
Often her lids sink evil and heavy.
The child’s hands run through her hair
And his tears fall hot and clear
Into her sockets black and vacant.
A nest of scarlet-coloured snakes coil up
Sluggishly in her turbulent womb.
Her arms let go something dead,
Enclosed by a carpet’s sorrow.
III
In the little brown garden a carillon sounds.
A blueness floats in the darkness of chestnuts,
The sweet cloak of a stranger.
Scent of mignonettes and a glowing sense
Of evil. The moist brow bows cold and pale
Over filth where the rat burrows,
Bathed by the soft scarlet lustre of stars;
In the garden the apples fall dull and soft.
The night is black. Ghostly the Föhn swells
The wandering boy’s white nightgown
And softly gropes the hand of the dead
In his mouth. Sonja smiles soft and beautiful.
Sonja
Evening returns to the old garden;
Sonja’s life, blue stillness.
Wild birds’ migratory journeys;
Bare tree in autumn and stillness.
Sunflower, gently inclined
Over Sonja’s white life.
Wound, red, revealed to none
Allows life into dark rooms,
Where blue bells are chiming;
Sonja’s step and gentle stillness.
A dying animal greets, in slipping away,
Naked tree in autumn and stillness.
Sun of an older time is shining
Above Sonja’s white brows,
Snow, which moistens her cheek,
And her brows’ wilderness.
Along
Corn and grape have been cut,
The hamlet in autumn and rest.
Hammer and anvil ring for ever,
Laughter in crimson bower.
Asters from dark fences
Bring to the white child.
Say how long we’ve been dead;
The sun seeks to appear black.
Little red fish in the pond;
Brow that fearfully hearkens to itself;
Softly the evening wind soughs at the window,
Blue organ droning.
Star and secret gleaming
Grant one more upward gaze.
Apparition of the mother in pain and dread;
In the dark, black mignonettes.
Autumn Soul
(version 2)
Hunter’s call and blood baying;
Behind cross and brown hill
Softly blinds the pond mirror,
The hawk cries harsh and clear.
Over stubble field and path
A black silence already quivers;
Purer sky in the branches;
Only the brook runs silent and calm.
Fish and game soon slip away.
Blue soul, dark wandering
Soon parted us from loves, others.
Evening changes sense and image.
Bread and wine of a righteous life,
God into your mild hands
Man lays the dark end,
All guilt and red torment.
Afra
(version 2)
A child with brown hair. Prayer and amen
Silently darken the evening coolness
And Afra’s smile red in yellow frame
Of sunflowers, dread and grey sultriness.
Shrouded in a blue cloak the monk saw her
In times past piously painted on church glass;
This still grants friendly conduct through pain,
When her stars ghost through his blood.
Autumn decline; and the elder trees’ silence.
Brow touches the blue stirring of waters,
A cloth of hair laid over the bier.
Rotten fruit drops from branches;
Unspeakable is the flight of birds, encounter
With the dying; then follow the dark years.
Autumn of the Lonely
Dark autumn returns swollen with fruits and abundance,
The yellowed lustre of beautiful summer days.
A pure blue steps from a decayed shell;
With age-old legends bird flight resounds.
Wine is pressed, the mild stillness
Suffused with quiet replies to dark questions.
And here and there a cross on a hill desolate;
Into red forests a herd fades away.
Over the mirror pond a cloud strays;
The peasant’s sober gesture comes to rest.
So softly stirs evening’s blue flight
A roof of dry straw, the black earth.
Soon stars nestle in the brow of the weary one;
In cool rooms a quiet modesty returns
And angels step softly from the blue
Eyes of lovers who more calmly bear their torment.
Rustling of reeds; a bony horror attacks,
When from bare willows black dew drips.
SEVEN-SONG OF DEATH
Rest and Silence
Shepherds buried the sun in the bare forest.
A fisherman hauled
The moon in nets of hair from the frozen pond.
In blue crystal
Pale man dwells, cheek resting against his stars;
Or bows the head in crimson sleep.
But still he who gazes out is touched
By black flight of birds, blue flowers and their holiness,
A nearer stillness ponders the forgotten, angels extinguished.
Once more the brow grows dark in lunar stone;
A radiant youth
The sister appears in autumn and black corruption.
Anif
Memory: gulls gliding over the dark sky
Man melancholy.
Silent you dwell in the shade of the autumn ash,
Rapt in the righteous body of the hill;
Ever you walk down the green river,
When evening has come,
Sounding love; placidly the dark prey encounters,
A rosier man. Drunk with bluish weather
The dying leaf stirs the brow
Musing on the mother’s grave countenance;
O, how all sinks into darkness;
Severe rooms and the ancient objects
Of the ancestors.
These shatter the stranger’s breast.
O, you signs and stars.
Great is the guilt of the born. Woe, you golden shudder
Of death,
When the soul dreams cooler blooms.
Ever in bare branches the night bird calls
Above the step of the lunar-one,
By village walls an icy wind resounds.
Birth
Mountains: blackness, silence, snow.
Red from the forest the hunt descends;
O, the mossy glances of the deer.
Stillness of the mother; beneath black pines
The sleeping hands unfold,
When the cold moon appears decayed.
Oh, the birth of man. Nightly blue waters
Sighing the fallen angel beholds his image,
A pale thing awakens in the musty room.
Two moons
The eyes of the old stone woman are gleaming.
Woe, the birthing scream. With black wing
Night touches the boy’s temples,
Snow, that sinks softly from crimson cloud.
Decline
(version 5)
To Karl Borromaeus Heinrich
Over the white pond
The wild birds have journeyed on.
At evening an icy wind blows from our stars.
Over our graves
Bows the shattered brow of night.
Beneath oaks we rock in a silver boat.
Ever the white walls of the city ring out.
Beneath arches of thorn