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Georg Trakl

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Limbo

By autumnal walls, there shadows are searching
For ringing gold upon the hill
Evening clouds that graze
In the withered plane trees calm.
Darker tears this age exhales,
Damnation, when the dreamer’s heart
Overflows with crimson sunset,
The sorrow of the smoking town;
Golden coolness blows behind the walker,
The stranger, from the graveyard,
As though a tender corpse followed in the shadows.

Softly chimes the stone building;
The orphans’ garden, the dark hospital,
A red ship on the canal.
Dreaming rise and fall in darkness
Decaying men
And from blackish doorways
Angels step with icy brows;
Blueness, the death lament of mothers.
Through their long hair rolls
A fiery wheel, the round day
Earth agony without end.

In cool rooms without meaning,
Belongings moulder, with bony hands
Unholy childhood
Gropes in the blue for fairytales,
The fat rat gnaws coffer and door,
A heart
Stiffens in snowy silence.

The crimson curses of hunger resound
In decaying darkness,
The black sword of lies,
As though a brazen gate slammed shut.

Will Stone’s version of Nerval’s Les Chimères has recently appeared (Menard Press, 1999); his translation of ‘El Desdichado’, the first of the sonnets, was published in MPT 11.

Translated by Will Stone

Page(s) 54

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