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.

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poem by Georg Trakl
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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

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poem by Georg Trakl
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Birth

These mountains: blackness, silence, and snow.
The red hunter climbs down from the forest;
Oh the mossy gaze of the wild thing.
The peace of the mother: under black firs
The sleeping hands open by themselves
When the cold moon seems ready to fall.
The birth of man. Each night
Blue water washes over the rockbase of the cliff;
The fallen angel stares at his reflection with sighs,
Something pale wakes up in a suffocating room.
The eyes
Of the stony old woman shine, two moons.
The cry of the woman in labor. The night troubles
The boy’s sleep with black wings,
With snow, which falls with ease out of the purple
clouds

poem by Georg Trakl
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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.

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poem by Georg Trakl
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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

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poem by Georg Trakl
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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.

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poem by Georg Trakl
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In the Evening

A blue brook, path and evening along decayed huts.

Behind dark shrubbery children play with blue and red balls;

Some swap the forehead and the hands rot in the brown foliage.

In bony stillness the heart of the lonely one shines,

A small boat rocks on blackish waters.

Through dark woods hair and laughter of brown maids flutters.

The shadows of the old people cross the flight of a small bird;

Mystery of blue flowers on their temples.

Others sway on black benches in the evening wind.

Golden sighs quietly expire in the bleak branches

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poem by Georg Trakl
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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.

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poem by Georg Trakl
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Grodek

At evening the autumn woodlands ring
With deadly weapons. Over the golden plains
And lakes of blue, the sun
More darkly rolls. The night surrounds
Warriors dying and the wild lament
Of their fragmented mouths.
Yet silently there gather in the willow combe
Red clouds inhabited by an angry god,
Shed blood, and the chill of the moon.
All roads lead to black decay.
Under golden branching of the night and stars
A sister's shadow sways through the still grove
To greet the heroes' spirits, the bloodied heads.
And softly in the reeds Autumn's dark flutes resound.
O prouder mourning! - You brazen altars,
The spirit's hot flame is fed now by a tremendous pain:
The grandsons, unborn.

poem by Georg Trakl
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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

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poem by Georg Trakl
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