Rondel
Rondel
The day’s gold is consumed,
The evening’s brown and blue:
The herders’ flutes swell then die
The evening’s blue and brown
The day’s gold is consumed.
Translated by Eric Plattner
…………………………………………………………………
Rondel
Verflossen ist das Gold der Tage,
Des Abends braun und blaue Farben:
Des Hirten sanfte Flöten starben
Des Abends blau und braune Farben
Verflossen ist das Gold der Tage.
poem by Georg Trakl
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Trumpets
Under the trimmed willows, where brown children
are playing
And leaves tumbling, the trumpets blow. A quaking
of cemeteries.
Banners of scarlet rattle through a sadness of maple
trees,
Riders along rye-fields, empty mills.
Or shepherds sing during the night, and stags step
delicately
Into the circle of their fire, the grove’s sorrow
immensely old,
Dancing, they loom up from one black wall;
Banners of scarlet, laughter, insanity, trumpets
poem by Georg Trakl
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The Evening
With the ghostly shapes of dead heroes
Moon, you fill
The growing silence of the forest,
Sickle-moon—
With the gentle embraces
Of lovers,
And with ghosts of famous ages
All around the crumbling rocks;
The moon shines with such blue light
Upon the city,
Where a decaying generation
Lives, cold and evil—
A dark future prepared
For the pale grandchild.
You shadows swallowed by the moon
Sighing upward in the empty goblet
Of the mountain lake.
poem by Georg Trakl, translated by Robert Bly
Added by Dan Costinaş
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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.
[...] Read more
poem by Georg Trakl
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In Hellbrun
Once more following the blue grief of the evening
Down the hill, to the springtime fishpond—
As if the shadows of those dead for a long time were
hovering above,
The shadows of church dignitaries, of noble ladies—
Their flowers bloom so soon, the earnest violets
In the earth at evening, and the clear water washes
From the blue spring. The oaks turn green
In such a ghostly way over the forgotten footsteps
of the dead
The golden clouds over the fishpond.
poem by Georg Trakl
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Untitled: The Blue Night
The blue night has softly risen on our foreheads.
Quietly our putrid hands touch
Sweet bride!
Our countenance became pale, moony pearls
Melted in green pond-ground.
Petrified ones, we contemplate our stars.
O painful! Culprits wander in the garden
The shadows in wild embrace,
So that tree and animal sank about them in immense anger.
Soft harmonies, when we ride
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poem by Georg Trakl
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The 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
[...] Read more
poem by Georg Trakl
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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,
[...] Read more
poem by Georg Trakl
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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,
[...] Read more
poem by Georg Trakl
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Whispered Into Afternoon
Sun of autumn, thin and shy
And fruit drops off the trees,
Blue silence fills the peace
Of a tardy afternoon’s sky.
Death knells forged of metal,
And a white beast hits the mire.
Brown lasses uncouth choir
Dies in leaves’ drifting prattle.
Brow of God dreams of hues,
Senses madness’ gentle wings.
Round the hill wield in rings
Black decay and shaded views.
Rest and wine in sunset’s gleam,
Sad guitars drizzle into night,
And to the mellow lamp inside
You turn in as in a dream.
poem by Georg Trakl
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