General survey of the Trakl-Site:

The Poetry and Letters
Kaleidoskope der Mehrdeutigkeit
Materials on Trakl
email

Georg Trakl:
The Poetical Bequest
(Part 1)

and the
German version of the Trakl-Site.

The order follows the German historical-critical edition
by Walter Killy and Hans Szklenar.

Collection 1909
Poems 1909-12
Poems 1912-14 (in part 2)
Double Versions of the poems published during Trakl's lifetime (in part 2)
Complexes of Poems and Fragments (in part 3)
Dramatic Fragments (in part 3)
Aphorisms (two texts) (in part 3)

Collection 1909

Arranged by Trakl as a survey of his poems written up to 1909.
Later he did not consider these texts to be of any importance.

Three Dreams

I

I think, I dreamed of falling leaves,

Of wide forests and dark lakes,

Of sad words' echo -

However, I could not understand their meaning.

I think, I dreamed of falling stars,

Of the weeping entreaty of pale eyes,

Of a smile's echo -

However, I could not understand its meaning.

Like falling leaves, like falling stars,

So I saw myself eternally coming and going,

A dream's immortal echo -

However, I could not understand its meaning.

II

In my soul's dark mirror

Are pictures of never-seen seas,

Of abandoned, tragic imaginary lands,

Dissolving into the blue, the thereabouts.

My soul bore blood-purple skies

Shone through by gigantic, crackling suns,

And strangely animated, shimmering gardens,

That steamed with muggy, deadly delights.

And my soul's dark fountain

Created pictures of immense nights,

Moved by nameless cantos

And breaths of eternal powers.

My soul shudders memory-dark,

As if it found itself in everything -

In unfathomable seas and nights,

And deep cantos, without beginning and end.

III

I saw many towns as if robbed by flame

And the times accumulated atrocity after atrocity,

And saw a lot of people putrefy to dust,

And everything float into oblivion.

I saw the gods fall to the night,

The holiest harps powerlessly smashed,

And kindled anew from putrefaction,

A new life swelling to the day.

Swelling to the day and again passing,

The eternally identical tragedy,

That thus we play without understanding,

And its insanity's nightly torture

Wreathes the soft glory of beauty

Like a smiling universe of thorns.

From the Still Days

So ghostly are these late days

Just like the look of sick people, sent here

In the light. However, the night shades the muted lament

Of their eyes, toward which they already turn.

They probably smile and recall their celebrations,

How one is moved after songs, half forgotten,

And searches words for a sad gesture,

Which already grows pale in silence unmeasured.

So the sun still plays around ill flowers

And lets them shiver in the thin, clear airs

With a death-cool delight.

The red forests whisper and darken,

And more death-nightly the woodpeckers' hammering echoes

Just like a reverberation from airless crypts.

Dusk

You are rumpled, distorted by every pain
And shake with the discord of all melodies,
You burst harp - a poor heart,
From which gloom’s sick flowers bloom.

Who has ordered the enemy, the murderer for you,
That stole the last spark of your soul,
How he makes this scanty world godless
To a whore, ugly, ill, pale with putrefaction!

From shadows a wild dance still swings
To frizzily ruptured, soulless sound,
A round dance around beauty’s thorn wreath,

Which witheringly crowns the lost winner,
- A bad trophy for that fought desperation,
And that does not reconcile the bright divinity.

Autumn

In the evening, when the bells ring peace,

I follow the wonderful flights of birds,

That in long rows, like devout processions of pilgrims,

Disappear into the clear autumn vastness.

Wandering through the garden closed for the night

I dream after their brighter destinies

And hardly feel the motion of the hour hands.

Thus I follow their journey over the clouds.

Then a breath of decay makes me tremble.

A bird complains in defoliated branches.

The red wine sways on rusty trellises.

Meanwhile like the death-dances of pale children

Around dark fountain edges that weather,

Shivering blue asters bend in the wind.

The Horror

I saw myself go through abandoned rooms.

- The stars danced crazily on blue ground,

And on the fields the dogs howled loud,

And in the treetops the foehn rummaged wildly.

But suddenly: stillness! Stuffy fever glow

Lets poisonous flowers bloom from my mouth,

From the branches like from a wound

Pale gleaming dew falls, and falls, and falls like blood.

From a mirror's deceitful emptiness

A countenance slowly lifts in the vagueness

Out of horror and darkness: Cain!

Very quietly the velvet curtains rustle,

Through the window the moon looks as if into emptiness,

There I am alone with my murderer.

Devotion

Not lost from my young years

Is silent devotion to a sound of bells,

To all churches' dusking altars

And their blue domes heaven-wide.

To an organ's tune at evening,

To wide squares fading in darkness,

And to a fountain that splashes, softly and quietly

And sweetly, like unintelligible children's babbling.

I see myself dreaming silently, folding the hands,

And whispering prayers forgotten for a long time,

And early gloom sombering my glance.

Since a woman's picture gleams

Out of confused shapes, wreathed by sinister grief,

And pours into me the chalice of nefarious shudders.

Sabbath

A whiff of feverish poisonous plants
Makes me dream in moony dusks,
And quietly I feel entwined, embraced,
And see like a sabbath of insane witches

Blood-colored blossoms in the mirrors’ brightness
Pressing flaming prurience from my heart,
And their lips experienced in all arts
Swell furiously near my drunken throat.

Pestilence colored flowers of tropical beaches,
Offer her chalices to my lips,
Cloudy drool-fountains of nauseating tortures.

And one gobbles - o raving Maenad -
My flesh, drooped from the sultry vapors,
And ecstaticized in pain by terrible prurience.

Song in the Night

I

Born from the shadow of a breath
We wander in abandonment
And are lost in the eternal,
Like victims ignorant wherefore they are consecrated.

Like beggars nothing is our own,
We fools at the locked gate.
As blind people we listen in the silence,
In which our whisper is lost.

We are the wanderers without destinations,
The clouds which the wind blows away,
The flowers shaking in death’s coolness,
Which wait, until one mows them down.

II

So that the last torment becomes complete with me,
I do not defend you, you hostile dark powers.
You are the road to great stillness,
Upon which we stride in the coolest nights.

Your breath makes me burn louder,
Patience! The star dies down, the dreams glide
In those realms not named to us,
And which we may only walk along dreamlessly.

III

You dark night, you dark heart,
Who mirrors your holiest ground,
And your malice’s last abysses?
The mask stares before our pain -

Before our pain, before our lust
The empty mask’s stony laughter,
On it the earthen things broke,
And ourselves not deliberately.

And a strange enemy stands before us,
Who jeers, about which we struggle dying,
So that our songs sound cloudier
And what weeps in us remains dark.

IV

You are the wine that makes drunk,
Now I bleed in sweet dances
And must wreath my suffering with flowers!
So your deepest mind wills, o night!

I am the harp in your womb,
Now your dark song struggles
For the last pains in my heart
And makes me eternal, unreal.

V

Deep rest - o deep rest!
No devout bell rings,
You sweet mother of pain -
Your death-widened peace.

Close all wounds
With your cool, good hands -
So that inward they bleed to death -
Sweet mother of pain - you!

VI

O let my silence be your song!
What should the poor’s whisper be to you,
Who is separated from life’s gardens?
Let you be nameless in me -

Who is dreamlesslybuilt up in me ,
Like a bell without tone,
Like my pain’s sweet bride
And the drunken poppy of my sleepings.

VII

I heard flowers die in the ground
And the wells’ drunken lament
And a song from the bell’s mouth,
Night, and a whispered question;
And a heart - o death-wound,
Beyond its poor days.

VIII

The darkness extinguished me in silence,
I became a dead shadow in the day -
Then I stepped from the house of joy
Outside in the night.

Now a silence dwells in my heart,
That does not feel the dreary day -
And smiles up to you like thorns,
Night - forever and ever!

IX

O night, you mute gate before my suffering,
See this dark stigmata bleeding to death
And completely inclined the staggering chalice of agony!
O night, I am ready!

O night, you garden of oblivion
Around my poverty’s closed-to-the-world shine,
The wine leaves wilt, the wreath of thorns wilts.
O come, you grand time!

X

My demon once laughed,
When I was a light in gleaming gardens,
And play and dance were my companions
And the wine of love, which makes drunk.

My demon once wept,
When I was a light in painful gardens
And humility was my companion,
Whose radiance shines on poverty’s house.

However, now my demon neither weeps nor laughs,
I am a shadow of lost gardens
And my death-dark companion is
The silence of the empty midnight.

XI

My poor smile which struggled for you,
My sobbing song faded away in darkness.
Now my path comes to an end.

Let me tread in your cathedral
Like once, a fool, simple minded, devoutly,
And stand adoring mutely before you.

XII

You are in deep midnight
A dead shore at the silent sea,
A dead shore: Never more!
You are in deep midnight.

You are in deep midnight
The heaven in which you glowed as a star,
A heaven from which no more God blossoms.
You are in deep midnight.

You are in deep midnight
An unbegotten in sweet womb,
And never existing, unreal!
You are in deep midnight.

The Deep Song

From deep night I was released.

My soul is astonished in immortality,

My soul listens over space and time

To the melody of eternity!

Not day and lust, not night and suffering

Is the melody of eternity,

And since I listened to eternity,

I feel no more lust and suffering!

Ballad

A fool wrote three signs in the sand,

A pale maiden stood there before him.

Loudly the sea sang, o it sang.

She held a cup in the hand,

Which gleamed up to the edge,

Like blood so red and heavy .

No word was spoken - the sun faded away,

Then the fool took the cup

Out of her hand and drank it empty.

Then its light extinguished in her hand,

The wind blew away the three signs in the sand -

Loudly the sea sang, o it sang.

Ballad

A heart laments: you do not find her,

Her native country is probably far from here,

And her face is strange!

The night weeps by a door!

In the marble hall light upon light burns,

O stuffy, o stuffy! Somebody dies here!

A whisper somewhere: o do you not come?

The night weeps by a door!

A sobbing still: o that he would see the light!

Then it became dark there and here -

A sobbing: brother, o do you not pray?

The night weeps by a door.

Ballad

A sultry garden stood the night.

We kept silent ourselves about what grips us horribly.

From this our hearts awoke

And succumbed under the burden of silence.

No star blossomed in that night

And nobody asked for us.

Only a demon has laughed in the darkness.

Be cursed everyone! Then the deed came into being.

Melusine

At my windows the night weeps -
The night is mute, the wind probably weeps,
The wind, like a lost child -
What is it that makes him weep so?
O poor Melusine!

Like fire her hair blows in the storm,
Like fire passing clouds, and laments -
There for you, you poor maiden,
My heart speaks a still night prayer!
O poor Melusine!

Decay

A wind is blowing! The green lights

Sing extinguished - large and satiated

The moon fulfils the high hall,

Where no more celebrations sound through.

The ancestral portraits quietly smile

And far-off - their last shadow fell,

The room is sultry with putrefaction,

Arround which ravens mutely move in circles.

A lost sense of past times

Looks from the stony masks,

Pain distorted and empty of existence

Mourning in abandonments.

Sick smells of sunken gardens

Quietly caress the decay -

Like the echo of sobbing words

Quivering over open crypts.

Poem

A pious song came to me here:

You simple heart, you holy blood,

O take from me such an evil fervor!

There it was heard and laments no more!

My heart is heavy of every sin

And is exhausted in evil fervor,

And does not plead to the holy blood,

And is so mute and empty of tears.

Night Song

Over nocturnal dark floods
I sing my sad songs,
Songs which bleed like wounds.
However, no heart carries them to me again
Through the darkness.

Only the nocturnal dark floods
Rush, sob my songs,
Songs which bleed from wounds,
They carry them to my heart again
Through the darkness.

By a Window

Above the roofs the sky-blue,

And clouds passing by,

Before the window a tree in spring dew,

And a bird shoots up skyward drunk

A lost scent of blossoms -

A heart feels: This is the world!

The stillness increases and the midday glows!

My God, how rich is the world!

I dream and dream and life flees,

Life there outdoors - somewhere

Far-off to me because of a sea of loneliness!

A heart feels it and doesn't become glad!

Colorful Autumn

The fountain sings, the clouds stand

In clear blueness, white, delicate;

Silent people wander thoughtfully

Down there in the evening-blue garden.

The ancestors' marble has turned grey.

A line of birds streaks into the distance

A faun with dead eyes gazes

On shadows that glide into darkness.

Leaves fall red from the old tree,

Rotate inside through the open window.

The room glows in dark fires,

In it shadows, like ghosts.

Opal smoke weaves over the grass,

A cloud of wilted, bleached scents,

In the fountain the sickle moon shines

Like a green glass in freezing air.

The Three Ponds in Hellbrunn

The First

Around the flowers the blowflies reel,
Around the pale flowers on dull flood,
Go away! Go away! The air burns!
In the depth the fervor of putrefaction glows!
The pasture weeps, the silence stares,
A sultry vapor brews on the waters.
Go away! Go away! It is the place
For black toads' disgusting rut.

The Second

Images of clouds, flowers, and people
Sing, sing, joyful world!
Smiling innocence reflects you -
Everything it likes becomes heavenly!
It amicably transforms darkness into light,
Distant things become near! O joyful you!
Sun, clouds, flowers and people
Breathe the peace of God in you.

The Third

The waters shimmer greenish-blue
And calmly the cypresses breathe,
The evening sounds bell-deep -
Then the depth grows immeasurably.
The moon rises, the night turns blue,
Blossoms in the reflection of the floods -
An enigmatic Sphinx face,
On which my heart wants to bleed to death.

On the Death of an Old Woman

Often I listen full of horror at the door

And when I arrive it seems to me that someone fled,

And her eyes see past me

Dreamily, as if they would see me elsewhere.

Thus she sits completely stooped in herself and listens

And seems far-off from the things around her,

However, she trembles when noise rushes at the window,

And then cries still, just like an anxious child.

And caresses her white hair with tired hand

And asks with paled glance: Must I go already?

And has a crazy fever: The little light in the altar

Went out! Where do you go? What has happened?

Gipsy

The longing flames in their nightly glance
Toward that homeland they never find.
So they drift in an unfortunate fate,
That only melancholy may fathom completely.

The clouds lead their ways,
A migration of birds may sometimes escort them,
Until it loses their track in the evening,
And the wind sometimes carries an Ave of bells

In their camp’s star-loneliness,
So that their songs swell more longing
And sob from inherited curse and suffering,
That no stars of hope softly illuminate.

Nature Theater

Now I step through the slender gate!
Promiscuous step in the avenues
Drifts away and quiet waft of words
From people, passersby.

I stand before a green stage!
Begin, begin again, you play
Of lost days, without crime and punishment,
Ghostly only, strange and cool!

To the melody of the early days
I see myself going up there again,
A child whose quiet, forgotten lament
I see weeping, strange to my understanding.

You wondering face turned to the evening,
Was I once this, that now makes me weep,
Like your still unfinished gestures
That point to the night mutely and shuddering.

Exhausting

Putrefaction of dream-created paradises

Blows around this mourning-filled, tired heart,

That drank only disgust out of all sweetness,

And bleeds to death in vulgar pain.

Now it beats after the rhythm of faded dances

To the cloudy melodies of despair,

Meanwhile the star-crowns of old hope

Wither on the long ago godless altar.

From the drunkenness of fragrances and wines

An extreme awake feeling of shame remained with you -

Yesterday in distorted reflection -

And everyday's gray grief crushes you.

Closing Chord

The last, pale light went from the day,
The early passions have rustled down,
The holy wine of my joys spilled
Now my heart weeps in the night and listens

After the echo of its young celebrations,
Which trails off so placidly in the dark,
So shadowy, like wilted leaves falling
On an abandoned grave in autumn night.

Accord

Very bright tones in the thin winds,

They sing the distant mourning of this day,

That makes us dream after never-felt showers

Completely filled with unimaginable smells.

Like mementos to lost companions

And quiet echo of delights sunken in night,

The foliage falls in the long ago abandoned gardens,

Which sun themselves in the silence of paradise.

In the bright mirror of the clarified floods

We see the dead time strangely animate itself

And our passions in the bleeding

Lift our souls to more distant heavens.

We go through deaths newly transformed

To deeper tortures and deeper delights,

Where the unknown deity governs -

And we are completed by eternally new suns.

Crucifixus

He is the God before whom the poor kneel,
He, fate’s mirror of their earthly agonies,
A pale God, disgraced, spit at,
Perished on the hill of the murderer's dishonor.

They kneel before torture of His flesh,
That shall wed their humility to Him,
And the night and death of His last glance
Shall toughen their heart in the ice of death’s longing -

So that His nightly death's head of thorns
- The symbol of earthly suffering - opens
The gate to poverty’s paradises
Greeted by pale angels and the lost.

Confiteor

The colored pictures which life paints,

I see them gloomily only by twilights,

Like frizzy distorted shadows, cloudy and cold,

Hardly born, already defeated by death.

And since the mask fell from every thing,

I see only fear, desperation, disgrace and plagues,

Mankind's heroless tragedy,

A bad play, staged on graves, corpses.

This terrible dream-view disgusts me.

But a higher authority wants me to stay,

A comedian who speaks his role,

Coerced, full of desperation - boredom!

Silence

Over the forests the moon

Gleams pale, makes us dream,

The willow by the dark pond

Weeps soundlessly in the night.

A heart extinguishes - and placidly

The fogs flood and rise -

Silence, silence!

Before Sunrise

In the dark many bird voices call,

The trees and the springs murmur noisily,

In the clouds a rose-colored glow sounds

Like early love's distress. The night blues away -

With shy hands the twilight softly polishes

The love lair, feverishly stirred up,

And lets the drunkenness of languished kisses end

In dreams, smiling and felt half-awake.

Blood Guilt

Night threatens at the bed of our kisses.

Somewhere a whisper: who absolves your guilt?

Still trembling from the sweetness of nefarious lust

We pray: forgive us, Mary, in your mercy.

Out of flower vases greedy scents climb,

Wheedling our foreheads pale with guilt.

Exhausting under the waft of sultry air

We dream: forgive us, Mary, in your mercy.

But the well of the sirens rushes louder,

And the sphinx rises darker before our guilt,

So that our hearts sound again more sinfully,

We sob: forgive us, Mary, in your mercy.

Encounter

The stranger on the way - we look at each other

And our tired eyes ask:

What have you done with your life?

Be silent! Be silent! Leave all laments!

Already it becomes cooler around us,

The clouds dissolve in the vastnesses.

I think we shall ask more no longer

And nobody will escort us to the night.

Perfection

My brother, let us go more silent!

The streets darken placidly.

In the distance flags probably gleam and wave,

However, brother, let us be alone -

And rest looking at heaven,

Softly and wholly prepared in the heart,

And oblivious to past deed.

My brother, see, the world is wide!

Outdoors the wind plays with clouds,

They come like us, from somewhere.

Let us be like the flowers are,

So poor, my brother, so beautiful and glad!

Metamorphosis

An eternal light glows dark-red,

A heart so red, in sin's pressure!

Hail, o Mary!

Your pale effigy has blossomed

And your mantled body glows,

O woman, Mary!

In sweet tortures your lap burns,

Then your eye smiles painfully and largely,

O mother, Mary!

Evening Walk

I go into the evening,
The wind jogs along and sings:
You are bewitched by every light,
O feel, what struggles with you!

A dead woman’s voice that I loved
Speaks: poor is the fools’ heart!
Forget, forget what clouds the soul!
The becoming shall be your pain!

The Saint

When in the hell of self-created sufferings

Cruelly indecent pictures plague him -

No heart was ever so enchanted by lascivious prurience

Like his, and no heart so tormented

By God - he lifts gaunt hands,

Unredeemed, praying to heaven.

But, only agonizingly insatiable lust forms

His rutting, feverish prayer, its fervor

Surges there through mystical infinities.

And not so drunkenly the Evoe

Of Dionysus sounds, as if his shout

Of torment forces fulfillment in deadly,

Furiously slobbering ecstasy: Exaudi me, o Mary!

To a Woman Passer-by

I have once seen passing-by

A face rich with pain,

That seemed akin to me deeply and clandestinely,

So god-sent -

And passed and disappeared.

I have once seen passing-by

A face rich with pain,

That impressed me,

As if I had recognized one,

Who dreaming I once called beloved

In an existence that long ago disappeared.

The Dead Church

On dark benches they sit packed

And lift extinguished looks

To the cross. The lights gleam as if covered,

And cloudy and as if covered the head of wounds.

The incense rises from a golden vessel

To the height, dying songs

Exhale, and as if afflicted the room dusks

Uncertainly and sweet. The priest strides

Before the altar; but, he practices the pious rites

With tired spirit - a miserable player

Before bad prayers with numb hearts,

In soulless play with bread and wine.

The bell sounds! The lights flicker more cloudily -

And paler, as if covered the head of wounds!

The organ hisses! In dead hearts memory

shudders on! A bleeding countenance of pain

Wraps itself in darkness and the despair

Stares after him in the emptiness from many eyes.

And one who sounded like all voices,

Sobs - meanwhile the horror grew in the room,

The death-horror grew: Have mercy on us -

Lord!

Poems 1909-12

Melusine

What just woke me?

My child, blossoms fell in the night!

Who whispers so sadly, as if in dream?

My child, spring goes through the room.

O see! His face pale like tears!

My child, he probably blossomed much too richly.

How his mouth burns! Why do I weep?

My child, I kiss my life into you!

Who grabs me so hard, who bends to me?

My child, I fold your hands.

Only where do I go? I dreamed so beautifully!

My child, we want to go to heaven.

How good, how good! Who smiles so quietly?

Then her eyes turned white -

Then all lights extinguished

And deep night drifted through the house.

The Night of the Poor

Dusk falls!

And the night o hammers

Dully on our door!

A child whispers: How you tremble

So much!

Yet we poor

Bend deeper and keep silent

And keep silent as if we were no more!

Night Song

Strike me pain! The wound glows.

I shall not notice this agony!

Look a riddle-filled star blooms

From my wounds in the night!

Strike me death! I am finished.

De profundis

The chamber of the dead is full of night

My father sleeps, I keep vigil.

The dead one's hard face

Shimmers white in the candlelight.

The flowers smell, the fly hums

My heart listens unfeeling and becomes silent.

The wind throbs quietly at the door.

It opens with bright clinking.

And outside a field of ears rustles,

The sun crackles in the firmament.

Bush and tree hang full of fruits

And birds and butterflies whirr in space.

In the field the peasants mow

In the deep silence of high noon.

I make the sign of the cross on the dead person

And soundlessly my step fades away in the green.

At the Cemetery

Rotten stone towers sultrily warmed.

Yellow haze of incense hovers.

Bees hum chaotically swarmed

And the flower trellises shake.

Slowly a breath stirs there

By the sun-still walls,

Dwindles glimmering, like a deceit -

Songs for the dead deeply shiver away.

Long it listens after in the green,

Lets the bushes shine brighter;

Brown swarms of mosquitoes spray

Over old tombstones.

Sunny Afternoon

A branch rocks me in the deep blue.

In the frolicking, autumnal leaf-tangle

Moths flicker, intoxicated and crazy.

Ax blows resound in the floodplain.

My mouth bites into red berries

And light and shadows sway in the foliage.

For hours golden dust falls

Crackling in the brown ground.

The thrush laughs from the bushes

And frolicking and loudly the autumnal leaf-tangle

Strikes together above me -

Fruits detach bright and heavy.

Age

An animal face in the brown green

Glows shyly to me, the bushes smolder.

Very far away an old fountain sings

With children's voices. I listen there.

The wild jackdaws mock me

And all around the birches veil themselves.

I stand silent before a weed fire

And softly pictures paint themselves on it,

An ancient fairytale of love on golden ground.

The clouds spread their silence on the hill.

From the ghostly pond-mirror

Fruits beckon, shining and heavy.

The Shadow

Since I sat in the garden this morning -

The trees stood abloom in blue,

Full of thrush calls and trills -

I saw my shadow in the grass,

Immensely distorted, a fantastical animal,

That lay before me like a bad dream.

And I left and trembled very much,

Meanwhile a fountain sang in the blueness

And a bud leapt purple

And the animal went alongside.

Quaint Spring

Probably around the deep midday,

I lay on an old stone,

Before me in quaint dress

Three angels stood in the sunshine.

O ominous spring year!

In the acre the last snow melted,

And the birch's hair hung quivering

In the cold, clear lake.

From the sky a blue ribbon blew,

And beautifully a cloud flowed within,

Facing it, I lay dreaming -

The angels kneeled in sunshine.

Loudly a bird sang marvelous stories,

And at once I could understand it:

Still before your first desire is satisfied,

You must go die, must go die!

The Dream of an Afternoon

Be silent! the ancestor arrives;

And his step dusks away again.

Shadows float up and down -

Birches hanging in the window.

And on the old vine-hill

The round dance of fauns romps anew,

And the slender nymphs rise

Quietly from the fountain-mirror.

Hear! A far thunderstorm threatens.

Incense steams from dark cresses,

Moths celebrate silent masses

Before decayed flower trellises.

Summer Sonata

Rotten fruits smell stunning.

Bushes and trees sound sunnily,

Swarms of black flies sing

On the brown forest glade.

In the pool's deep blueness

The light of weed-fires blazes.

Hear sudden love cries whirring

From yellow flower walls.

Butterflies chase themselves for a long time;

Drunkenly my shadow dances

On sultry meadows of thyme.

Brightly ecstacized blackbirds trill.

Clouds show stiff breasts,

And wreathed by foliage and berries

Under dark pines you see

A skeleton play the violin grinning.

Luminous Hour

Far on the hill flute-sounds.

Fauns lurk in the marshes,

Where sluggishly the slender nymphs

Rest hidden in reed and seaweed.

In the pond's mirror-glass

Golden butterflies ecstacize,

Quietly an animal with two backs

Moves in the velvety grass.

Sobbing in the birch grove

Orpheus breathes tender love-babble,

Softly and jokingly the nightingales

Join in his song.

Phoebus a flame glows

Still on Aphrodite's mouth,

And drizzled from ambergris scent -

The hour reddens darkly.

Childhood Memory

The sun shines alone in the afternoon,

And quietly the tone of the honey-bees wavers off.

In the garden the sisters' voices whisper -

There the boy listens in the wooden shed,

Still fevering over book and picture.

Weary the linden-trees wilt immersed in the blue.

A heron hangs motionless drowned in the ether,

By the fence fantastic shadow-shapes play.

The sisters go quietly into the house,

And soon their white clothes glimmer

Vaguely from bright rooms,

And confused the bushes' bluster dies down.

The boy strokes the cat's hair,

Bewitched by the mirror of her eyes.

An organ-sound far away on the hill

Lifts wonderfully into heaven.

An Evening

In the evening the sky was overcast.

And through the grove full of silence and grief

A dark-golden shower went.

Distant evening bells faded away.

The earth has drunk icy water,

At the forest's edge a fire lay glowing,

The wind quietly sang with angel's voices

And shivering I have gone to the knee,

In the heather, in bitter cresses.

Far outside clouds swam in silver puddles,

Desolate guards of love.

The heath was lonesome and unmeasured.

Season

Ruby-veins crept into the foliage.

Then the pond was calm and wide.

By the forest's edge brightly scattered

Bluish speckles and brown dust lay.

A fisherman drew in his nets.

Then dusk came over the field.

But, a yard shined still palely illuminated

And maids brought fruit and wine.

Distantly a shepherd's song died after.

Then huts stood bleak and strange.

The forest in gray shroud

Evoked sad memory.

And overnight time became quiet

And an army of ravens flew

As if in black holes in the forest and moved

Toward the town's very distant ringing.

In Wine Country

The sun paints courtyard and walls with autumn,

The fruit stacked in heaps all around,

Before them poor children cower.

A gust thins out old linden-trees.

Through the gate a golden shower rains

And the women blessed with child

Tiredly rest on rotten benches.

Drunkards swing glasses and jugs.

A hoodlum lets his fiddle sound

And smocks swell lustfully in the dance.

Roughly brown bodies embrace.

From windows empty eyes gaze.

Stench rises from the fountain's mirror.

And black, decayed, departed

The hills of vines dusk all around.

A migration of birds glides swiftly southwards.

The Dark Valley

In pines a migration of crows flutters away

And green evening fogs rise

And like in dream a sound of violins

And maids run to the dance in the inn.

One hears laughter and shouts of drunkards,

A shower goes through old yews.

In deathly pale window panes

The shadows of the dancers scurry past.

It smells of wine and thyme

And lonely calling resounds through the forest.

The beggars listen on the steps

And begin to pray senselessly.

A deer bleeds to death in the hazel bushes.

Dully gigantic tree arcades sway,

Overloaded by icy clouds.

Lovers rest embraced by the pond.

Summer Dawn

In the green ether suddenly a star flickers

And in the hospital they smell the morning.

The thrush trills crazily hidden in the bush

And cloister bells go dreamlike and far.

A statue towers in the square, lonely and slender

And in the courtyard red flowerbeds dawn.

The air around wooden balconies shakes with sultriness

And flies quietly reel around the stench.

The silver curtain there before the window hides

Entwined limbs, lips, tender breasts.

A hard hammering echoes from the tower scaffold

And the moon decays white in the firmament.

A ghostly dream-chord hovers away

And monks plunge from the church gates

And stride lost in the infinite.

In the sky a bright summit lifts.

In the Moonlight

An army of vermin, mice, rats

Romps in the hallway which shimmers in the moonlight.

The wind cries out as if in dream and whimpers.

At the window the shadows of small leaves quiver.

Occasionally birds twitter in the branches

And spiders creep on the bleak walls.

Through empty ways pale specks shudder.

A quaint silence dwells in the house.

In the courtyard lights seem to float

On putrid wood, decayed junk.

Then a star glistens in a black pool.

Statues still stand there from old times.

One still sees contours from other things

And a writing, faded on rotten signs,

Also perhaps the colors of cheerful pictures:

Angels singing before Mary's throne.

Fairy Tale

Rockets drizzle in the yellow sunshine;

What a mask-like throng in the old park.

Landscapes are mirrored in the gray sky

And sometimes one hears the faun scream dreadfully.

Its golden grin appears garishly in the grove.

In cresses the bumblebees' thick of battle clamors,

A rider trots past on a sallow white horse.

The poplars glow in vague rows.

The little girl who drowned in the pond today

Rests as a saint in the bleak room

And a glimmer of clouds often blinds her.

The old people go into the hothouse dully and ill

And water their flowers which wither.

At the gate voices whisper dream-confused.

A Spring Evening

Come evening, friend, who surrounds my forehead with darkness

Gliding on paths through soft-green sowing.

Also willows beckon solemnly and calmly;

A beloved voice whispers in the branches.

The tranquil wind floats beautiful things here from somewhere,

Scent of daffodils which silverly touches you.

In the hazel bush the blackbird makes music -

A shepherd's song gives answer from the firs.

How long the small house has disappeared

Where now a birch copse gushes;

The pond bears a lonely constellation -

And shadows rounding silently in the goldenness!

And time is so miraculous,

That one looks for angels in human glances

Which delight in innocent play.

Yes! Time is so miraculous.

Elegy

The girlfriend juggling with green flowers

Plays in moony gardens -

O! what glows behind yew hedges!

Golden mouth which stirs my lips,

And they ring out like the stars

Over the brook Kidron.

But the star-nebulas sink over the plain,

Dance wildly and unspeakably.

O! my girlfriend your lips

Pomegranate lips

Ripen on my crystalline mouth of shells.

Heavily the golden silence

Of the plain rests on us.

The blood of the children

Murdered by Herod

Steams to heaven.

Springtime of the Soul

Flowers scattered blue and white

Aspire cheerfully upon the ground.

Silverly the evening hour weaves,

Tepid wasteland, loneliness.

Life blooms dangerously now,

Sweet rest around cross and grave.

A bell rings its length of time,

Everything seems marvelous.

A willow softly hovers in the ether,

Here and there a flickering light.

Spring whispers and promises

And the damp ivy trembles.

Lushly bread and wine are green,

The organ sounds full of the power of wonder.

And around cross and passion

A ghostly light gleams.

O! How beautiful are these days.

Children go through the dusk;

Already the wind blows bluer.

Far away thrushes mock.

Western Dusk

A faun-cry romps through sparks,

In the parks cascades of light foam,

Metallic vapors around steel arcades

Of the city which rolls around the sun.

A god races shimmering in a harness of tigers

Past women and bright bazaars,

Filled with flowing gold and wares.

And slave people howl now and then.

In the canal a drunken ship rotates

Sluggishly in green solar sheaves.

A cheerful concert of colors

Quietly rises before the hospital.

A Quirinal exhibits sinister splendor.

In mirrors colorful crowds circulate

On bridge arches and tracks.

Before benches a demon wakes palely.

A dreamer sees pregnant women

Glide past in slimy brilliance,

A dying man hears bells ringing -

A golden stash glows quietly in the horror.

The Church

Painted angels guard the altars;

And rest and shadows; beam from blue eyes.

In incense-fumes dirty lyes swim.

Figures stagger woebegone in the emptiness.

In the black kneeler a smallish whore

With faded cheeks resembles the Madonna.

In golden beams wax figures hang;

Moon and sun circle the white-bearded God.

A shine of soft columns and skeletons.

The sweet voices of boys died at the chancel.

Very quietly rapt colors move,

A flowing red from Magdalene's lips.

A pregnant woman goes astray in grave dreams

Through this twilight full of masks, flags.

Her shadow crosses the saints' still ways,

The angel's rest in lime-washed rooms.

To Angela

1

A lonely destiny in abandoned rooms

A soft insanity gropes on wallpapers.

Beds of geraniums flow by windows,

Daffodils also and more chaste in wasting away

As alabaster which gleams in the garden.

In blue veils India's mornings smile.

Their sweet incense scares away the stranger's worries,

Sleepless night by the pond because of Angela.

His pain rests hidden in an empty mask,

Thoughts which steal away blackly in the darkness.

The thrushes laugh all around from soft throats.

2

The fruits which round red in branches,-

Angela's lips which show her sweetness,

Like nymphs who bend over springs

In restful viewing for long hours,

The green-gold, long hours of the afternoon.

However, sometimes the spirit returns to fight and game.

In golden clouds a battle melee surges

And a hyacinth-like thing floats from mazy cresses.

A demon ponders thunderstorms in the sultriness,

In the grave's shadow of sad cypresses.

Then the first lightning falls from black flues.

3

The June willows' whisper in the evening;

A rain resounds long in flute sounds.

How motionless the birds hang in the gray!

And here Angela's rest in the dim branches;

The poet is this beauty's priest.

His mouth is flowed around by dark coolness.

In the valley fog softy rests poured out.

By the edge of the forest and gloom's shadow

A golden thing floats flowing from his mouth

By the edge of the forest and gloom's shadow.

Night embraces his drunken languishing.

To Angela

1

A lonely destiny in abandoned rooms.

A soft insanity gropes on wallpapers,

On windows, reddish beds of geraniums,

Daffodils also and more chaste in wasting away

As alabaster which gleams in the garden.

In blue veils India 's mornings smile.

Their sweet incense scares away the stranger's worries,

Sleepless night by the pond because of Angela.

His pain rests hidden in an empty mask,

Thoughts which steal away blackly in the darkness.

The thrushes laugh all around from soft throats.

2

In the crossway surrounded by spiky grass

The mowers crouch tiredly and drunk with poppy,

The sky has sunk very heavy on them,

The milk and desolation of long midday bells.

And sometimes crows flutter up in the rye.

With fruit and horrors the hot earth grows.

In golden brilliance, o childish gesture

Of lust and its hyacinthine silence,

When bread and wine nurtured by the flesh of the earth

Show Sebastian in dream their spirituality.

Angela's spirit belongs to gentle clouds.

3

The fruits which round red in branches,

The angel's lips which show her sweetness,

Like nymphs who bend over springs

In restful viewing for long hours,

The green-gold, long hours of the afternoon.

However, sometimes the spirit returns to fight and game.

In golden clouds a battle melee of flies

Surges over putrefaction and abscesses.

A demon ponders thunderstorms in the sultriness,

In the grave's shadow of sad cypresses.

Then the first lightning falls from black flues.

4

The willow-copses' whisper in the evening;

A rain resounds in flute sounds.

Motionless birds hang in the evening!

And here Angela's rest in the dim branches;

The poet is this beauty's priest.

Painful pondering in the dark coolness.

Balmy puddles scent with poppy and incense

By the edge of the forest and gloom's shadow

Angela's joy and the games of the stars

The night embraces the languishing of lovers.

The edge of the forest and gloom's shadow.

[...]
[...]
In milk and desolation; - dark scourge

Saturn sinisterly steers your hour.

In the shadow of black thujas

Eve strays disfigured from blood and wounds,

The sweet body shredded by dogs -

O mouth which coos heart-rendingly.

The stiffly upraised entreaty of the arms

Rises wildly in the white tent of stars.

In the maple the lunar lantern steams,

By the pond the azaleas glow.

O be still! In the cage the blind thrush

Sings her drunken melody

For the price of golden Helios -

A little candle flame twitches and sounds.

O song full of pain and eternity!

Stars and shadows pale into grey

And are soon only lost signs.

A cock crows around dawn-time.

Daydreaming in the Evening

Where one goes in the evening is not the angel's shadow

And beauty! grief and gentler forgetting alternate;

The stranger's hands grope coolness and cypresses

And his soul is taken by an astonished languishing.

The market is emptied of red fruits and garlands.

Harmoniously the church's blackish pageantry attunes

In a garden the tones of soft play sound,

Where tired ones find each other after the meal.

A carriage rushes, a spring very far away through green puddles.

There a childhood appears dreamlike and elapsed,

Angela's stars, enclosed devoutly to a mystical constellation,

And calmly the evening coolness rounds.

White poppy loosens the limbs of the lonely ponderer,

So that he views righteousness and God's deep joy.

From the garden his shadow strays here in white silk

And bends down over mournful waters.

Branches knocked whispering into the abandoned room

And a loving and small evening flowers' tremor.

Corn and golden vines gird the site of man,

A lunar shimmer, however, ponders after the dead.

Winter Walk in A-Minor

Red spheres often emerge from branches,

Snowed under softly and black by a long snowfall.

The priest escorts the dead person.

The nights are fulfilled by celebrations of masks.

Then tousled crows glide over the village;

In books fairy tales are written miraculously.

At the window an old man's hair flutters.

Demons go through the ill soul.

The well freezes in the courtyard. Decayed stairs fall

In the darkness and a wind blows

Through old shafts which are buried.

The palate tastes the frost's strong spices.

Always Darker

The wind, which moves purple treetops,

Is God's breath that comes and goes.

The black village rises before the forest;

Three shadows are laid over the field.

Meagerly the valley dusks

Below and silent for the humble.

A seriousness greets in garden and hall,

That wants to finish the day,

Piously and darkly an organ-sound.

Marie is enthroned there in blue vestment

And cradles her babe in hand.

The night is starlit and long.

En-route

A scent of myrrh which roams in the twilight.

Plazas red and desolate sink in fume.

Bazaars circle and a golden ray flows

In old shops queerly and confused.

In the dishwater decay glows; and the wind

Evokes dully the agony of burnt gardens.

The possessed pursue golden dreams.

By windows dryads rest slender and dulcet.

The dream-addicted wander pined over by a wish.

Workers surge shimmering through a gate.

Steel towers glow upward at the edge of the sky.

O fairy tale barred gray in factories!

In the sinisterness an old man trips dollish

And a jingling sound of money laughs lasciviously.

A halo falls on that little girl

Who waits before the coffee house, soft and white.

O golden brilliance which she wakes in panes!

Sun-filled noise roars distantly and ecstatically.

A crooked writer smiles as if crazy

To the horizon which is frightened green by an uproar.

State coaches of crystal move on bridges,

Fruit barrows, hearse black and sallow,

The canal swarms with bright steamboats,

Concerts sound. Green domes drizzle.

Public baths flicker in magic of light,

Execrated streets which one tears down.

A center of epidemics chaotically circles in ether,

A light from forests breaks through ruby dust.

Enchanted an opera house shines in the gray.

From alleys masks flood unforeseen,

And somewhere a fire still blazes furiously.

A small moth dances in the wind-roar.

Lodgings threaten full of squalor and stench.

Viola colors and chords move

Along cellar holes before the hungry.

A sweet child sits dead on a bank.

En-route

A scent of myrrh which roams in the twilight.

A carnival play, on plazas black and desolate.

A golden ray breaks through clouds and flows

In small shops fantastically and confused.

In the dishwater decay glows and the wind

Evokes dully the agony of burnt gardens.

The possessed pursue dark things;

By windows dryads rest slender and dulcet.

A boy's smile pined over by a wish .

Locked an old church gate stares.

The benevolent ear listens to sonatas;

A rider trots past on a white horse.

In the sinisterness an old man trips dollish

And a jingling sound of money laughs lasciviously.

A halo falls on that little girl

Who waits before the coffee house, soft and white.

O golden brilliance which she wakes in panes!

The sun's noise roars distantly and ecstatically.

A crooked writer smiles as if crazy

To the horizon which is frightened green by an uproar.

In the evening state coaches move through thunderstorms.

Through darkness a corpse falls, empty and pale.

A bright steamboat disembarks in the canal,

A young negress calls in the wild green.

Sleep walkers step before a candle light,

The spirit of evil goes into a spider.

A flock of epidemics orbits the drinkers;

An oak forest breaks into bleak rooms.

In the plan view an opera house appears.

From alleys masks flood unforeseen,

And somewhere a fire still blazes furiously.

The bats cry in the wind-roar.

Lodgings threaten full of squalor and stench.

Viola colors and chords move

Along cellar holes before the hungry.

A sweet child sits dead on a bank.

December

At evening jugglers travel through the forest

On quaint wagons, small steeds.

A golden stash seems locked in clouds.

In the white plain villages are painted.

The wind swings shield and billet black and cold.

A raven follows the morose comrades.

From the sky a ray falls on bloody gutters

And placidly a funeral procession pilgrimages to the cemetery.

The shepherd's hut dwindles nearby in the gray,

In the pond a brilliance of old treasures glistens;

The farmers sit down in the tavern for wine.

A boy glides shyly to a woman.

One still sees the sexton in the vestry

And reddish utensils, beautiful and dim.

December Sonnet

At evening jugglers travel through the forest

On quaint wagons, small steeds.

A golden stash seems locked in clouds.

In the dark plain villages are painted.

The red wind billows linen black and cold.

A dog rots, a shrub smokes blood-doused.

The reed is flown through by yellow horror

And placidly a funeral procession pilgrimages to the cemetery.

The old man's hut dwindles nearby in the gray,

In the pond a brilliance of old treasures glistens;

The farmers sit down in the tavern for wine.

A boy glides shyly to a woman.

A monk fades in the darkness soft and dark.

A bleak tree is a sleeper's sexton.

Green-golden the day arises

By the hill over the chapel

Marie looks out bloom-white

So beautifully the old threshold gleams.

There willows rock softly in the blue

From primrose dew falls!

Be happy! Be happy!

There I will probably sing all the dear day

Before you, Marie, in the white dress

My foolish whimsical suffering

So cheerfully the thrush trill laughs

And the birches rise green

And blow about still graves -

Be happy! Be happy!

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Kaleidoskope der Mehrdeutigkeit
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