Homecoming
When the evening breathes golden rest
Forest and dark meadow before which
Man is a looker,
A shepherd, dwelling in the flocks' dusking stillness,
The patience of the red beeches;
So clearly since it has become autumn. By the hill
The lonely one listens to the flight of birds,
To dark meaning and the shadows of the dead
Have gathered more seriously around him;
Cool mignonette scent fulfills him with shudders,
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poem by Georg Trakl
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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,
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poem by Georg Trakl
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Mankind
Mankind
Face to face with the fire-abyss,
thundering hooves, the doomed brows of warriors,
across the blood-fog bootsteps echo, the iron death knells,
surrender, black in blue brains:
here Eve’s cloud, in pursuit, the passing over and bleeding coins.
Light breaks through the malignancy, his last meal.
A swelling silence dwells in bread and wine,
and the twelve are cleaved.
All night they wail in their dreams beneath the olive branches.
Saint Thomas plunges his hand into the heart of the wound.
Translated by Eric Plattner
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Menschheit
Menschheit vor Feuerschlünden aufgestellt,
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poem by Georg Trakl
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The Rats
The Rats
The hunter’s moon cuts straight through the farmyard.
From the roof’s edge a shadow descends.
The window empties itself without a word.
Up the stairs, below one’s breath, the rats cavort.
And the scuttling whistles here and there
and the grizzly whiff of your human stink
gives you away,
the ghost in the moonlight trembles through and through
and their bottomless greed tugs at you
and the houses and barns comply,
pregnant with corn and fruit.
In the dark out there the icy wind thrashes and weeps.
Translated by Eric Plattner
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poem by Georg Trakl
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The Ravens
The Ravens
Over the black crevice
at noon the ravens rush with rusty cries.
Their shadows touch the deer’s back
and at times they loom in gnarled rest.
O how they derange the brown stillness,
in the one acre itself entranced,
like a woman married to grave premonitions,
and at times you can hear them bicker
about a corpse they sniffed-out somewhere,
and sharply they bend their flight towards north
and dwindle away like a funeral
march in the air, shivering with bliss.
Translated by Eric Plattner & Joseph Suglia
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poem by Georg Trakl
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Landscape
Landscape
September evening. The somber calls of the herdsmen float
across the dimming village. Molten metal sparks in the blacksmith’s.
A massive horse rears darkly back. To the fervor of its blazing nostrils
the hyacinth curls of the servant girl cling.
At the edge of the woods a faint cry stiffens the deer’s back,
and the yellow flowers of autumn
bend wordlessly over the pond’s blue countenance.
The tree was consumed in red flame. Up flutter the dark faces of bats.
Translated by Eric Plattner
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Landschaft
Septemberabend; traurig tönen die dunklen Rufe der Hirten
Durch das dämmernde Dorf; Feuer sprüht in der Schmiede.
Gewaltig bäumt sich ein schwarzes Pferd; die hyazinthenen Locken der Magd
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poem by Georg Trakl
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Hohenburg
Hohenburg
The house is empty. Fall in the room.
The moon’s lone glow
and a birth at the edge of the dawning woods.
Forever your thoughts turn to the ashen face of your people,
removed from the bedlam of time.
Over the dreamer green branches bend eagerly,
cross and evening.
With bruised arms his star envelops the Song of Songs.
Towards the unpeopled window it ascends.
Thus the stranger shudders in blackness,
as his eyelids gently recede over
the far-off one. The silver voice of the wind in the hallway.
Translated by Eric Plattner
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poem by Georg Trakl
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Psalm
Stillness; as if blind people sank down by autumnal wall,
Listening with rotten temples to the flight of the ravens;
Golden stillness of autumn, the countenance of the father in the flickering sun
At evening the old village decays in the peace of brown oaks,
The red hammering of the smithy, a pounding heart.
Stillness; in slow hands the maid hides the hyacinthine forehead
Under fluttering sunflowers. Fear and silence
Of extinguishing eyes fulfills the dusking room, the halting steps
Of old women, the escape of the purple mouth which slowly expires in the darkness.
Taciturn evening in vine. From the low rafters
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poem by Georg Trakl
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Song of The Western Countries
Oh the nighttime beating of the soul’s wings:
Herders of sheep once, we walked along the forests
that were growing dark,
And the red deer, the green flower and the speaking
river followed us
In humility. Oh the old old note of the cricket,
Blood blooming on the altarstone,
And the cry of the lonely bird over the green silence
of the pool.
And you Crusades, and glowing punishment
Of the flesh, purple fruits that fell to earth
In the garden at dusk, where young and holy men
walked,
Enlisted men of war now, waking up out of wounds
and dreams about stars.
Oh the soft cornflowers of the night.
And you long ages of tranquillity and golden
harvests,
When as peaceful monks we pressed out the purple
grapes;
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poem by Georg Trakl
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Evening Song
Evening Song
At evening, when we walk on dark trails,
our bleached selves appear before us.
Thirsty
we drink from the pond’s white water,
the sweetness of our mournful childhood.
Weary, we rest beneath the elderberry
to behold the dawning gulls.
Spring clouds rise above the town’s dark thoughts—
mute, the monks’ nobler days.
As I took your tiny hands
your round eyes gently broke upon me.
This was long ago.
And yet, when darker songs descend upon the soul,
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poem by Georg Trakl
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