Huge fish swim inquisitively around the pale blooms with rigid, glassy eyes and then plunge into the depths again—soundlessly!
And the silence of desolation pervades everything.
III
And up there in a cracked tower chamber sits the count. Day in, day out.
He follows the clouds, which move over the treetops, luminous and pure. He likes to see the sun glowing in the clouds at evening when the sun sets. He hearkens to the sounds in the heights: to the cry of a bird flying past the tower or to the resounding roar of the wind when it whips around the castle.
He sees how the park slumbers, dull and oppressive, and he sees the swans gliding across the gleaming waters—which swim around the castle. Day in! Day out!
And the waters shimmer greenish-blue. But the clouds that pass over the castle are mirrored in the waters; and their shadows glow there radiant and pure as themselves. The waterlilies wave to him, like tiny dead-woman hands, and rock gently in the soft sounds of the wind, sadly, dreamily.
On all that surrounds him dying here, the poor count gazes like a little lunatic child over whom calamity looms, and who no longer has the strength to go on, who dies away like the morning shadows.
He listens only to the small, sorrowful melody of his soul: the past!
When evening comes, he lights his old, sooted lamp and reads in great yellowed tomes about the greatness and glory of the past.
He reads with a fevered, resounding heart, until the present, to which he does not belong, sinks away. And the shadows of the past loom up—immense. And he lives the life, the joyous beautiful life of his ancestors.
At nights, when the storm hunts about the tower, so that the walls creak down to their bedrock and frightened birds shriek at the windows, the count is overwhelmed by a nameless melancholy.
Doom weighs on his weary, centuries-old soul.
And he presses his face to the window and stares into the night beyond. There all appears to him hugely dreamlike, spectral! And horrifying. He hears the storm hurtle through the castle, as if it sought to sweep out all the dead things and scatter them on the air.
But if the confused phantasm of night sinks away like a conjured shadow—again the silence of desolation pervades everything.
De Profundis (II)
With night the chamber of the dead is filled
My father sleeps, I keep vigil.
The hard face of the dead one
Glimmers white in the candlelight.
The flowers have scent, the fly hums
Without feeling my heart listens and goes silent.
The wind beats softly at the door.
It opens with a bright clattering.
And outside a field of corn rustles,
In the firmament the sun crackles.
Heavy with fruit hang bush and tree
Birds and butterflies whir in space.
In the field the peasants mow
In the deep silence of noontide.
On one dead I make the sign of the cross
And soundlessly my step fades in the green.
At the Cemetery
Decayed stone towers sultrily warmed.
Yellow haze of incense hovers.
Bees hum in chaotic swarm
And the flower trellises quiver.
Slowly a feature stirs there
By walls stilled by sun,
Dies out glimmering, an illusion—
Deeply shiver songs for the dead.
Long it listens after in the green,
Has the bushes shine still brighter;
Over old tombstones
Spray brown mosquito swarms.
Sunny Afternoon
A bough rocks me in deepest blue.
In the frolicsome, autumn leaf tangle
Moths flicker, drunken and crazed.
In the meadow axe blows resound.
My mouth bites into red berries
And in the leafage light and shadow sways.
For long hours golden dust falls
Crackling in the brown ground.
The thrush chortles from the bushes
And frolicking the autumn leaf tangle
All noisily rains down over me—
Fruits are loosed glowing and heavy.
Aeon
An animal face in the brown green
Glows at me timidly, the bushes gleam.
In the far distance an old fountain sings
With child voices. There I listen.
The wild jackdaws mock me
And all around the birches veil themselves.
I stand silent before a fire of tares
And softly images paint themselves,
On golden ground an ancient myth of love.
Over the hill the clouds spread their silence.
Over the ghostly pond-mirror
Fruits beckon, glowing and heavy.
Dream of an Afternoon
Silence! The ancient one is passing;
And once more his step turns to dusk.
Shadows float up and down—
Birches, that hang in the window.
And on the old hill of vines
The roundelay of cavorting fauns again,
And the slender nymphs rise
Softly from the fountain’s mirror.
Listen! A distant thunderstorm threatens.
Incense reeks from dark cresses,
Moths celebrate silent masses
Before the decayed flower trellises.
Luminous Hour
On the hill distant sound of flutes.
In marshes the fauns skulk,
Where concealed in reed and seaweed
Languid slender nymphs repose.
In the pond’s mirror-glass
Golden butterflies are in rapture,
Quietly a dual-backed creature
Stirs in the velvety grass.
Sobbing in the birch grove
Orpheus breathes tender love babble,
Gently and jokingly nightingales
Chime in with his song.
Phoebus a flame grows
Yet on Aphrodite’s mouth,
And sprayed through with scent of amber—
Darkly the hour turns red.
Childhood Memory
In the afternoon the sun shines alone,
And softly it wafts away the honey bees’ tone.
In the garden the sisters’ voices whisper—
There the boy listens in the woodshed,
Still feverish over book and image.
Wearily the lindens sink down into the blue.
Drowned in the ether a heron hangs lifeless,
Fantastic shadow forms play by the fence.
The sisters pass silently into the house,
And soon their white frocks flicker
Vaguely from bright rooms,
And confused the uproar of bushes fades.
The boy strokes the cat’s hair,
Bewitched by the mirror of her eyes.
Far off on a hill an organ sound
Lifts wonderfully to heaven.
An Evening
At evening the sky was clouded over.
And through the grove filled with silence and horror
Drove a dark-golden shudder.
Evening bells died away in the distance.
The earth has drunk icy water,
At the forest’s edge a fire lay smouldering,
The wind sang softly with angel voices
And trembling I drop to my knees,
In the heather, in bitter cresses.
Far beyond clouds swam in silver laughter
Forsaken sentinels of love.
The heath was lonely and vast.
Season
Ruby veins crept into the foliage.
Then the pond lay still and wide.
By the forest’s edge lay scattered
Brown dust and bluish speckles.
A fisherman drew in his nets.
Dusk moved over the
field.
But still a yard shone palely illumined
And maids bore fruit and wine.
Afterwards a shepherd’s song died far away.
Then huts stood bare and estranged.
The forest in grey death shroud
Awakened sad memories.
And overnight time became quiet
And as if down black holes in the forest
A host of ravens flew and moved
Towards the city’s distant chimes.
In Wine Country
The sun paints autumnal courtyard and walls,
The fruit gathered in heaps all around,
Before them huddle the pauper children.
A gust of wind thins out the old lindens.
Through the gate a shower golden rains
And weary the women blessed with child
Rest on mouldering benches.
Drunkards swing glass and jug.
A vagabond has his fiddle come alive
And smocks swell lustily in the dance.
Rough brown bodies embrace.
From vacant windows eyes gaze out.
From the fountain mirror stench climbs.
And black, decayed, solitary
Dusking around the hills of vines.
A bird migration sweeps swiftly south.
The Dark Valley
A cortège of crows breaks up in the pines
And green evening mists rise
And as in a dream the sound of violins
And maids hurry to dance at the inn.
You hear drunken cries and laughter,
Through ancient yews passes a shudder.
In corpse-pale window panes
The shadows of dancers flit past.
All reeks of wine and thyme
And through the forest lonely calling.
On steps the beggar folk hearken
And witlessly give themselves to prayer.
In the hazel bush a deer bleeds to death.
Soundless immense arcades of trees,
Overcharged with icy clouds.
Lovers rest entwined by the pond.
Summer Dawn
In green ether suddenly a star flickers
And in the hospital they sense morning.
Concealed in the bush the thrush madly trills
And dreamlike and distant sound the cloister bells.
A statue stands in the square, lonely and slender
And in the courtyards red flower-beds dawn.
Around wooden balconies the air quivers with sultriness
And flies stagger softly in the stench.
The silver curtain there by the window veils
Entwined limbs, lips, tender breasts.
From the tower scaffolds a hard hammering resounds
And the moon decays white in the heavens.
A ghostly dream-chord drifts away
And monks plunge from the church gates
And stride forth lost to the infinite.
In the sky looms a bright summit.
In Moonlight
A host of vermin, mice, rats
Cavorts in the hallway, that in moonlight shimmers.
The moon cries out as if in a dream and mewls.
Tiny leaf shadows tremble at the window.
Now and then birds chirrup in the branches
And spiders creep over black walls.
Through empty passages pale flecks shiver.
An uncanny silence dwells in the house.
In the courtyard lights seem to float
Over rotten wood, mouldered clutter.
Then a star glistens in a black pond.
Figures still there from bygone times.
You yet see tracings of other things
And a writing, faded on mouldering sketches,
Perhaps the colours of bright pictures:
Angel, in song before the throne of Mary.
Fairy Tale
In yellow sunshine the skyrockets sparkle;
This mask-like crowd in the old park.
Landscapes are mirrored in the grey sky
And sometimes you hear the horrible cry of the faun.
Its golden grin emerges garish in the grove.
In battling turmoil, bees run riot in the cresses,
A rider trots past on a pale-white horse.
In uneven rows the poplars glow.
The little girl, drowned today in the pond,
Rests now a saint in the bare chamber
And often a shimmering of clouds blinds her.
The old ones go into the greenhouse dulled and sick
To water their blooms, that wither.
At the gate dream-confused voices whisper.
Lament (III)
The girlfriend juggling with green flowers
Plays in moon gardens—
O! what glows behind hedges of yew!
Golden mouth, which stirs my lips,
And they ring out like the stars
Over the brook Kidron.
But the starry nebulas sink over the plain,
Dance wild and inexpressible.
O! your lips my female friend
Ripen on my crystalline mouth of shells.
Heavily it rests on us
The golden silence of the plain.
Heavenwards steams the blood
Of the infants
Murdered by Herod.
Springtime of the Soul (II)
Flowers strewn blue and white
Strive cheerfully upon the ground.
Silvery weaves the evening hour,
Balmy wasteland, loneliness.
Life now blossoms with peril,
Sweet rest around cross and grave.
A chiming bell,
All seems magical.
A willow softly hovers in the ether,
Here and there a light flickers.
Spring promises and whispers
And the damp ivy shivers.
Deliciously flourish bread and wine,
Organ sound of marvellous power.
And around cross and passion
Gleams a ghostly light.
O! How lovely are these days.
Through twilight the children go;
Blue already the winds are blowing.
Distant mocks the thrushes’ tapping.
Western Twilight
A faun cry cavorts through sparks,
Cascades of light foam in parks,
Metallic vapours at the steel arcades
Of the city, which rolls around the sun.
A god speeds shimmering with a team of tigers
Past women and shining bazaars,
Filled with flowing gold and countless wares.
Now and then the slave folk wail.
A drunken ship turns on the canal
Sluggish in the green sheaves of sun.
A cheerful concert of colours
Rises softly before the hospital.
A Quirinal sculpture displays dark splendour.
In mirrors colourful crowds circle
Upon arches of bridges and tracks.
Before benches a demon palely awakes.
A dreamer sees women with child
Glide past in slimy radiance,
A dying man hears ringing of bells—
A gold hoard glows softly in the horror.
Daydreaming at Evening
Where you go at eve is not the angel’s shadow
And beauty! Exchange of grief and gentler forgetting;
The stranger’s hand gropes coolness and cypresses
And his soul is gripped by an astonishing languidness.
The market is empty of red fruits and wreaths.
Peacefully the church’s black pageantry attunes,
In a garden the gentle notes of play resound,
Where after the meal the weary find each other.
A cart darts, a spring so far off through beds of green.
There a childhood
appears dreamlike and timeworn,
Angela’s stars, enclosed piously into a mystical image,
And calmly ripens the evening coolness.
White poppy frees the limbs of the lonely musing one,
So he sees righteousness and God’s deep happiness.
From the garden his shadow strays here in white silk
And inclines over mournful waters.
Whispering branches thrust into the abandoned room
And lovers and quivering of tiny evening flowers.
Corn and golden vines gird the site of man,
But a glimmer of moon muses after the dead.
Winter Walk in A-minor
Often red globes emerge from branches,
The long snowfall blanketed soft and black.
The priest escorts the dead one.
Nights filled with mask celebrations.
Then tousled crows sweep over the village;
In books fairy tales are miraculously written.
At the window an old man’s hair flutters.