by Georg Trakl
About the gathered peoples.
Over blackish outcrops
Drunk with death
Plunges the glowing wind bride,
The blue wave
Of the glacier
And it drones
Mightily the bell in the valley:
Flames, curses
And the dark play of lust,
A stony head
Storms heaven.
Melancholy (II)
Mighty are you dark mouth
From within, figure formed
Of autumn clouds,
Golden evening stillness;
A greenish dusking mountain stream
In shattered pine
Shadow district;
A village,
That decays devoutly in brown images.
There black horses frisk
On the misty pasture.
You soldiers!
From the hill, where the sun rolls dying,
The laughing blood plunges—
Beneath oaks
Dumbstruck! O glowering melancholy
Of the army; a shining helmet
Sank clanking from the crimson brow.
Autumn night so cool advances,
Gleaming with stars
Over the shattered remains of men
The peaceful maiden monk.
The Homecoming
(version 2)
Coolness of the dark years,
Suffering and hope
Preserved in cyclopean stone,
Mountains free of men,
Golden breath of autumn,
Evening cloud—
Purity!
Gazing out from blue eyes
Crystal childhood;
Beneath dark spruce
Love, hope,
So that from fiery lids
Dew drips into stiffened grass—
Irresistibly!
O! there the golden bridge
Breaking apart in the snow
Of the abyss!
Blue coolness
Breathes the valley at night,
Faith, hope!
Greetings you lonely graveyard!
Lament
Youth from crystal mouth
Into the valley sank your golden glance;
Red and pale the forest’s wave
In the black evening hour.
Evening strikes so deep a wound!
Fear! Death’s dream complaint,
Dead, grave and stark, the year
Gazes out from tree and deer;
Bare field and farmed earth.
The herdsman calls in his fearful flock.
Sister, your blue brows
Beckon softly in the night.
Organ sighs and hell laughs
And a horror grips the heart;
Desire to gaze on stars and angels.
Mother laments before her infant;
Red sounds the ore in the shaft,
Lust, tears and stony pain,
Dark legends of the Titans.
Melancholy! The lonely eagle’s lament.
Surrender to Night
Maiden monk! Enfold me in your darkness,
Your mountains cool and blue!
Down bleeds the dark dew;
Sheer rises the cross in glitter of stars.
Crimson broke mouth and lie
Cool in the decayed chamber;
Laughter still shines, golden play,
A bell’s last labours.
Moon cloud! Blackish falls
Wild fruit from the tree at night
And the room becomes a grave,
And a dream this earthly pilgrimage.
In the East
Dark is the wrath of the people
Like the wild organs of winter storm,
The crimson wave of battle,
Stripped leaf stars.
With shattered brows, silver arms
The night beckons dying soldiers.
In the shade of the autumn ash
The spirits of the slain are sighing.
Thorny wilderness girds the city.
From bleeding steps the moon
Chases the terrified women.
Wild wolves broke through the gate.
Lament (II)
Sleep and death, the dark eagles
Night-long sweep about this head:
Eternity’s icy wave
Would engulf the golden image
Of man. On terrible reefs
His crimson body is smashed
And the dark voice laments
Over the sea.
Sister of stormy melancholy
Look a fearful boat sinks
Beneath stars,
The silent countenance of night.
Grodek
(version 2)
At evening the autumn woods resound
With deadly weapons, the golden plains
And blue lakes, above which the sun
Rolls more darkly; night embraces
Dying warriors, the wild lament
Of their shattered mouths.
But silent on the pasture land
Red cloud, in which a wrathful god resides
Gathers the blood spilt, lunar coolness;
All roads lead to black putrefaction.
Under golden shoots of night and stars
The sister’s shadow sways through the silent grove,
To greet the ghosts of heroes, the bleeding heads;
And softly in the reeds sound the dark flutes of autumn.
O prouder grief! You brazen altars,
Today a mighty anguish feeds the hot flame of the spirit,
The unborn descendants.
Revelation and Downfall
Strange are the nocturnal paths of men. As I sleepwalked past rooms of stone and in each a calm lamp burned, a copper candlestick, and as I sank freezing onto the bed, the black form of the female stranger stood over me and silently I hid my countenance in the slow hands. Also at the window the hyacinth had blossomed blue and the ancient prayer rose on the crimson lips of the one breathing, crystalline tears sank from lids wept over the bitter world. At this hour I was the white son at his father’s death. In blue showers the night wind came from the hill, the dark lament of the mother again dying out, and I saw the black hell in my heart; minute of shimmering stillness. Softly an unspeakable countenance stepped from the chalky wall—a dying youth—the beauty of a homecoming race. Moon-white the coolness of stone enveloped the waking temple, on decayed stair the steps of the shadows faded, a rose-coloured roundelay in the little garden.
Silently I sat beneath smoky rafters in a deserted tavern, lonely with wine; a radiant corpse bent over a dark form and at my feet lay a dead lamb. Out of mouldered blueness stepped the pale form of the sister and her bleeding mouth spoke thus: pierce black thorn. O my silver arms still resound from wild thunderstorms. Flow blood from the moon feet, blossoming on nocturnal paths over which the rat streaks shrieking. You stars flicker in the arch of my brow; and softly the heart rings in the night. A red shade with flaming sword broke into the house, fled with snowy brow. O bitter death.
And a dark voice spoke out of me: I broke my horse’s neck in the nocturnal forest when madness leapt from his purple eyes; over me fell the shadows of elms, the blue laughter of the source and the black coolness of night, as I a savage hunter flushed out a snowy deer; in stony hell my countenance died away.
And shimmering a drop of blood fell into the wine of the lonely one; and when I drank, it tasted more bitter than poppy; and a blackish cloud enshrouded my head, the crystal tears of damned angels; and softly ran the blood from the sister’s silver wound and over me fell a fiery rain.
At the forest edge I go, a silent one, from whose speechless hands the sun of hair sank; stranger at the evening hill, who sobbing lifts lids over the stony city; a deer that stands silently in the peace of the ancient elder tree; O haunted the dusking head hearkens, or the faltering steps follow the blue cloud at the hill, solemn stars. To one s
ide the green seed silently guides, furtively accompanies the doe on mossy woodland paths. The huts of the villagers are closed up in silence and the wild brook’s blue lament is frightening in the black calm of the wind.
But as I climbed down the rocky path, madness seized me and I let a shriek loud into the night; and as I with silver fingers inclined over the silent waters, I saw that my countenance had departed. And the white voice spoke to me: kill yourself! Sighing, the shadow of a boy rose in me and regarded me radiantly from crystalline eyes, so that I sank down sobbing beneath the trees, the mighty star vault.
Peaceful wanderings through wild rocks far from evening hamlets, homebound flocks; far off the sinking sun grazes on a meadow of crystal and its wild song trembles, the lonely bird cry, dying away in blue peace. But softly you come in the night, as I lay waking on the hill, or raving in spring storm; and ever blacker melancholy clouds the departed head, grim lightning bolts terrify the nocturnal soul, your hands tear my breathless breast.
As I walked in the dusking garden, and the black shape of evil yielded, the hyacinthine stillness of the night enveloped me; and I rode in a crooked boat over the restful pond and a sweet peace stirred my stony brow. Speechless I lay beneath the old willows and the blue sky was high above me and covered with stars; and as I faded away beholding, dread and deepest pain died within me; and the blue shadow of the boy rose radiant in darkness, gentle song; over greening treetops, crystal cliffs the white countenance of the sister rose on lunar wings.
With silver soles I descended thorny stairs and I stepped into the whitewashed chamber. Serenely a candle burned inside and silently I buried my head in crimson linen; and the earth gave back a child corpse, a lunar form, which slowly stepped from my shadow, plunged down stonily with shattered arms, fleecy snow.
UNCOLLECTED POEMS AND PROSE
The Three Ponds in Hellbrunn
(version 3)
Strolling past the black walls
Of evenings, silver sounds the lyre
Of Orpheus in the dark pond
But spring drips in showers
From branches in wild showers
Of the night wind silver sounds the lyre
Of Orpheus in the dark pond
Dying away by greening walls.
In the distance shine castle and hill.
Voices of women who died long ago
Weave delicately and dark-coloured
Over the white nymphine mirror.
They lament their fleeting fate
And day flows into the green
Whispers in the reeds, hovering returns—
And with them a song thrush jokes.
The water shimmers greenish-blue
And calmly the cypresses breathe
And their measureless melancholy
Flows over into evening’s blue.
Tritons emerge from the waters,
Decay trickles through walls
The moon drapes itself in green veils
And passes slowly over the waters.
St Peter’s Churchyard
Rock loneliness is all around.
Death’s pale flowers shudder
On graves, which mourn in darkness—
Yet this mourning knows no grief.
Silently heaven smiles down
Into this dream-sealed garden,
Where silent pilgrims await it.
On every grave the cross awakes.
The church rises up like a prayer
Before an image of eternal grace,
Many a candle burns beneath the arches,
And mutely petitions poor souls—
While the trees bloom in the night,
That death would conceal his countenance
Within their beauty’s shimmering fullness,
That has the dead dream deeper still.
A Spring Evening
A shrub filled with larvae; evening Föhn in March;
A mad dog runs through a barren field
The priest’s bell rings through the brown village;
A bare tree is contorted in black anguish.
In the shadow of old roofs bleeds the maize;
O sweetness, which staunches the hunger of sparrows.
Through yellowed reed a deer breaks furtively.
O lonely stand before waters still and white.
Unspeakably the walnut tree’s dream shape rises.
The friend is cheered by the boys’ rustic play.
Decayed huts, decrepit feelings;
The clouds roam deeply, blackly massed.
In an Old Garden
Perfume of mignonette drifts away in brown greenness,
Flickering quivers on the lovely pond,
The willows stand clothed in white veils
Wherein butterflies sketch crazed circles.
Abandoned there the terrace suns itself,
Goldfish glint deep in the water mirror,
Sometimes clouds swim over the hill,
And slowly the strangers set out again.
Brightly the bowers shine, since young women
Passed this way in the early morning,
Their laughter stayed, hanging from small leaves,
In a golden haze a drunken faun dances.
Evening Roundelay
(version 1)
Aster fields, brown and blue
Children playing there by crypts
In the shining buoyant air
Gulls suspended silver-grey.
Strange life lives in the wine.
Play louder you violins
What lust! Racing roundelay
Shivering the night comes in.
You laugh so loud brown Gret
Confused the sea dreams in the mind
While a just withered rose
Drifts down before me.
Night Soul
(version 2)
Silently a blue deer came down from black forests
The soul,
When it was night, a snowy spring over mossy steps.
Blood and weapon tumult from times past
Sough in the pine ground,
Always the moon shines in decayed rooms;
Drunk with dark poisons, silver larva
Bowed over sleeping shepherds,
Head, that silently abandons its legends.
O, then the other slowly opens cold hands
Under stony arches
To the blind window softly climbs a golden summer
And the steps of the dancing woman ring in the green
Night-long,
More often in crimson murk the owl’s hoot calls the drunkard.
Desolation
I
Nothing more interrupts the silence of desolation. Over the dark, age-old treetops the clouds extend and are mirrored in the greenish-blue waters of the pond, which shines like an abyss. And motionless, as if sunk in mournful surrender, the surface rests—day in, day out.
In the midst of the dark pond rises the castle with pointed, decayed towers and roofs. Weeds grow over the black, cracked walls, and sunlight falls back from the round, blind windows. In the gloomy, dark courtyards doves fly about seeking a hiding place in the cracks of the walls.
Always they appear to be fearful, for they fly furtively and scurry past the windows. Down in the courtyard the fountain splashes gentle and refined. Now and then the doves drink from the fountain basin.
Through the narrow, dusty passageways of the castle sometimes a musty aroma of fever streaks, so in fright the bats flutter up. Otherwise nothing disturbs the deep rest.
But the apartments are a dusty black! High and bare and frosty and filled with deceased objects. Through the blind windows sometimes a tiny light comes that is absorbed again by the dark. Here the past is dead.
Here, one day it stiffened into a single, crippled rose. In its insubstantiality time passes unheeding.
And the silence of desolation pervades everything.
II
No one may enter the park any
more. The branches of the trees are entangled a thousandfold, the whole park is nothing more than one giant organism.
And eternal night weighs beneath the spreading roof of leaves. And deep silence! And the air is saturated with a mouldering haze!
But sometimes the park awakes from heavy dreams. Then it drifts out a remembrance to cool starry nights, to secret hidden places, when it listened in on feverish kisses and embraces, to summer nights filled with ardent pomp and splendour, when the moon conjured confused images on the black ground, to people, who strolled with graceful chivalry full of rhythmic movements beneath its roof of leaves, who whispered sweet, mad words with tender propitious smiles.
And then the park sinks once more into its death-sleep.
On the waters the shadows of blood beeches and firs sway and from the depths of the pond a dull, mournful murmur comes.
Swans move over the gleaming waters, slow and still, their slender necks fully upright. They move along! Around the dead castle! Day in! Day out!
Pale lilies stand at the pond’s edge amongst sharply coloured grasses. And their shadows in the water are paler than themselves.
And when they die back, others emerge from the depths. And they resemble tiny dead-woman hands.