Demons drive through the sickening soul.
The well freezes in the yard. In darkness plunge
Decayed stairways and the wind blows
Through old shafts, which lie buried.
The palate tastes the frost’s sharp piquancy.
Ever Darker
The wind, which stirs crimson treetops,
Is God’s breath, which ebbs and flows.
The black village rises before the forest;
Three shadows are cast over the hill.
With paucity the valley dusks below
And all grows silent for the humble.
In garden and hall an earnestness greets
That craves to conclude the day.
Pious and dark an organ sounds.
Mary in blue vestment there enthroned
Cradling the infant in her hand.
The night is long, star-bright.
December
At evening jugglers trek through the forest
On quaint wagons, little horses.
A hoard of gold seems locked in clouds.
On the white lowlands villages are painted.
The wind swings signpost and stave black and cold.
A raven follows the sullen comrades.
From the skies a beam falls on bloody gutters
And softly a funeral cortège drifts to the cemetery.
Close by the shepherd’s hut fades in the grey,
In the pond gleams the lustre of old treasures;
The farmers sat in the tavern for wine.
A boy glides furtively to a woman.
You still see the verger in the vestry
And reddish objects, beautiful and dark.
(Untitled)
A carpet, wherein the afflicted landscape pales
Perhaps the sea of Galilee, a boat in the gale
From storm clouds things golden fall
Insanity, that grips the gentle human.
The ancient waters gurgle a blue laughter.
And sometimes a dark pit yawns wide.
The possessed are mirrored in cold metals
Blood-drops fall on shining platters
And a countenance decays in black night.
Flags, which murmur in gloomy vaults.
Others recollect the flight of birds
Over the gibbet the ravens’ mystical signs
In spiky grasses sink coppery serpents
In incense cushions, a smile lustful and clever.
Good Friday’s children stand blindly by fences
In the mirror dark gutters brimful with carrion
The sighing convalescence of the dying
And angels who pass through white eyes
From dusking lids golden redemption.
Delirium
Black snow, which runs from the roofs;
Into your brow a red finger dips
Into the cold chamber blue ice snow sinks,
The naked mirrors of lovers.
The head breaks into heavy pieces and senses
After shadows in the mirror blue ice snow,
The cold smile of a dead whore.
In carnation perfume weeps the evening wind.
At the Edge of Old Waters
(version 2)
Dark reading of the waters: broken brow in mouth of night,
Sighing in black pillows the boy’s bluish shadow,
The rustling of the maple, steps in the old park,
Chamber concerts that on a spiral staircase die out,
Perhaps a moon, which softly mounts the steps.
The gentle voices of nuns in the decayed church,
A blue tabernacle, which slowly opens,
Stars, which fall upon your bony hands,
Perhaps a walk through abandoned rooms,
The flute’s blue tone in the hazel bush—so softly.
Along Walls
An old path it goes along
By wild gardens and lonely walls.
Thousand-year-old yews tremble
In the rising falling song of the wind.
The moths dance, as if death is nigh,
Sobbing my glance drinks shadows and lights.
In the distance women’s faces float
Ghostly painted in the blue.
A smile quivers in the sunshine,
While onwards I slowly stride;
Boundless love provides escort.
Softly the hard rock goes green.
(Untitled)
A paleness, resting in the shadow of decayed stairways—
That at night one ascends in silver form
And wanders beneath the cloister.
In coolness of tree and without pain
Breathes the perfect
And has no need of autumn stars—
Thorns, over which the other falls.
His sad fall
The lovers ponder long after.
(Untitled)
The stillness of the dead loves the ancient garden
The madwoman who dwelt in blue rooms,
At evening the still shape appears at the window
But she draws the yellow curtain—
The trickling of glass beads recalled our childhood,
At night we found a black moon in the forest
Gentle sonata sounds in a mirror’s blueness
Long embraces
Her smile glides over the mouth of the dying.
(Untitled)
With rosy steps stone sinks in the moor
Song of gliding and black laughter
Figures pass in and out of rooms
And bony death grins in a black barque.
Pirate on the canal in red wine
Whose mast and sail often shattered in the storm.
The drowned nudge purple against the stone
Of the bridges. Steely jangles the call of the guards.
But sometimes the gaze listens in candlelight
And follows the shadows on mouldered walls
And dancers with sleep-entwined hands.
Night, that black breaks on your head
And the dead, who turn over in beds
Grasp the marble with broken hands.
(Untitled)
The blue night has gently risen on our brows.
Softly our putrefied hands touch
Sweet bride!
Pallid becomes our countenance, moon pearls
Melted in green pond meadow.
Stony we behold our stars.
O Agony! The guilty wander in the garden
The shadows in wild embrace,
So that in great fury tree and beast sank over them.
Gentle harmonies, when in crystal waves
We travel through the still night
A rosy angel steps from the graves of lovers.
(Untitled)
O the dwelling in stillness of the dusking garden,
When the eyes of the sister opened round and dark in the brother,
The crimson of their broken mouths
Melted in the coolness of evening.
Heart-wrenching hour.
September ripened the golden pear. Sweetness of incense
And by the old fence the dahlia flames
Say! Where were we, when we went by in a black skiff
In the evening,
The crane passed over. The freezing arms
Held black embraced, and within the blood ran.
And moist blue around our temples. Poor child.
Out of knowing eyes a dark race deeply ponders.
In the Evening
A blue brook, path and evening by decayed huts.
Children play with blue and red balls behind dark shrubs;
Some exchange the brow and hands rot in brown leafage.
In bony stillness glints the heart of the lonely one,
A row boat rocks on blackish waters.
Through the dark copse hair and laughter of brown maids flutters.
The shades of the old ones cross the flight o
f a small bird;
On their temples the secret of blue flowers.
Others sway on black benches in the evening wind.
Golden sighs softly die out in the bare branches
Of the chestnut; a sound of summer’s dark cymbals,
When on the decayed staircase the female stranger appears.
Judgement
Huts of childhood are in autumn,
Decayed hamlet; dark forms,
Singing mothers on the evening wind;
At windows Angelus and folded hands.
Dead birth; on green ground
Blue flowers’ secret and stillness.
Crimson mouth parted by madness:
Dies irae—grave and stillness.
Groping along green thorns;
In sleep: blood-spit, hunger and laughter;
Fire in the village, awakening in the green;
Dread and swaying on a burbling barque.
Or once more on a staircase of wood
The female stranger’s white shadow leans—
Poor sinner stumbling in the blue
Left his carrion behind for lilies and rats.
(Untitled)
Wind, white voice, which whispers near the sleeper’s temple
In rotten branches darkness crouches in his crimson hair
Long evening bell, sunk in the mud of the pond
And over it the yellow blooms of summer incline.
Concert of bumblebees and blue flies in wild grass and loneliness,
Where once Ophelia passed with stirring steps
Gentle demeanour of madness. Fearfully the green ripples through reeds
And the water lilies’ yellow leaves, in hot nettles a carcass rots
Awakening sunflowers childlike flutter about the sleeper.
September evening, or the dark call of the shepherds,
Perfume of thyme. Glowing spray of iron in the forge
Mightily it rears up a black horse; the maid’s hyacinthine lock
Snatches after the fervour of its crimson nostrils.
The cry of the partridge stiffens to yellow walls a plough rusts in rotting manure
Softly red wine trickles, the gentle guitar at the inn.
O death! The sick soul’s arching in decay silence and childhood.
With faces insane the bats flutter up.
(Untitled)
O the leaf-stripped beeches and blackish snow.
Softly blows the north wind. Here on the brown path
A darkness walked months past.
Alone in autumn. Always the flakes fall
In the bare branches
In the dry reeds; green crystal sings in the pond
Empty the hut of straw; childlike
Are birches blown on the night wind.
O the way that gently freezes in the darkness.
And the dwelling place in rosy snow
To Novalis
(version 2)
In dark earth rests the holy stranger.
God took the lament from his gentle mouth,
When he sank into his blossoming.
A blue flower
His song lives on in the nocturnal house of pain.
Nocturnal Lament
(version 2)
Night has risen over the rumpled brow
With lovely stars
Over the pain-petrified countenance,
A wild beast gorged on the loving heart
A fiery angel
Plunges with shattered breast on stony field,
Once more a vulture flutters up.
Woe in lament eternal
Fire, earth and blue spring mingle.
To Johanna
Often I hear your steps
Resound through the lanes.
In the little brown garden
The blueness of your shadow.
In the summer house at dusk
I sat silent before my wine.
A drop of blood
Fell from your temple.
In the singing glass
Hour of eternal melancholy.
From stars a snowy wind
Blows through the leaves.
Each death endures,
Night the pale man.
Your purple mouth
A wound lives in me.
As if I came from the green
Hills of firs and legends
Of our homeland
For so long forgotten—
Who are we? Blue lament
Of a mossy forest source,
Where the violets
In spring are secretly fragrant.
A peaceful village in summer
Once sheltered the childhood
Of our race,
Dying out now on the evening—
Hill of the white grandchildren.
Of our nocturnal blood
Shadows in the stony town.
Melancholy (III)
The blue soul has silently closed,
In the open window the brown forest sinks,
The stillness of dark beasts; at the bottom
The mill grinds, clouds rest floods by the footbridge,
Golden strangers. A procession of horses
Gallops red in the village. The garden brown and cold.
The aster freezes, so delicately painted on the fence
Almost far flown the sunflowers’ gold.
The voices of whores; dew is poured out
Onto hard grass and stars white and cold.
See death painted in fair shadows,
Tear-filled every countenance and closed.
To Lucifer
(version 3)
Lend your flame to the spirit, glowing melancholy;
Sighing the head rises into midnight,
At the greening spring hill; where before
A gentle lamb bled, the deepest pain
Endured; but the dark one follows the shadow
Of evil, or he lifts moist wings
To the golden disk of the sun and a bell sound
Convulses his pain-riven breast,
Wild hope; darkness of flaming downfall.
Daydreaming
(version 1)
Gentle life grows in the stillness
Step and heart hastens through the green
Lovers linger by hedges,
That swell heavily with fragrances.
The beech ponders; moist bells
Fell silent, the lad sings
The fire embraces darkness
O patience and silent rejoicing.
Blithe of spirit till the end
Beautifully inspired, silent night,
Golden wine, proffered by
A sister’s blue hands.
Psalm (II)
Silence; when the blind sank against the autumnal wall,
Hearkening with rotten temples, to the flight of ravens;
Golden stillness of autumn, the face of the father in flickering sun
At evening into peace of brown oaks the old village declines,
Red hammering of the forge, a pounding heart.
Silence; with slow hands the maidservant hides her hyacinthine brow
Beneath fluttering sunflowers. Fear and silence
Breaking eyes fill the darkening room, the hesitant steps
Of old women, flight of purple mouth that slowly dies out in darkness.
Silent evening in wine. From low-hanging beams falls
A nocturnal moth, nymph buried in bluish sleep.
In the yard the farmhand slaughters a lamb, the sweet aroma of blood
Clouds our brows, the sombre coolness of wells.
In mourning the dying asters’ melancholy, golden voices on the wind.
When night falls you gaze on me with mouldered eyes,
In blue stillness your cheeks have fallen to dust.
So softly dies a weed fire, into silence the black hamlet in the valley
As if the cross descended from blue Calvary,
And the mute earth cast out her dead.
Age
More spiritually shine the roses
By the garden fence;
O silent soul!
In the cool vine leaves
Grazes the crystalline sun;
O holy purity!
An old man with noble hands
Serves ripened fruits.
O glance of love!
The Sunflowers
You golden sunflowers,
Deeply inclined towards death,
You humility-filled sisters
In such stillness
Helian’s year closes
Mountain coolness.
Then with kisses grows pale
His dark brow
Amidst those golden
Flowers of melancholy
By silent darkness
The spirit determined.