—Translated from German by Daniele Pantano
Last night I thought
the stars were singing,
as I woke up
and heard a soft sound.
But it was a lyre drifting
through the rooms,
such an anxious sound
in the cold, sharp night.
I thought about failed
efforts, prayers, and curses,
and for a while I heard it singing,
lay awake for quite a while.
How nice it must be to sit in a bark
and go on your nightly excursion.
The lake lies spread out like a silk coat
and has gently beckoned me to come to it.
The surface of the water glistens darkly bright,
how solemn is heedlessness and slowness quick.
The moon hangs down from above like a lamp in a room,
life resembles a stage; with gestures as delicate as
birch twigs, Circe appears center stage,
It snowed into the land of evening.
As I am already on the move,
I continue to walk through the streets
and watch the glittering silver snow fall.
Some handsomely walk in pairs
and are perhaps already used to this beauty,
goodness, they have sought and found each other,
and one does not want to part with the other.
Nevertheless, some are walking alone
and are in such isolation
often less alone than the others who found
each other and are bound forever together
and who would like to feel themselves unbound
to casually walk through the city now and then,
for snowing reminds us of the rose’s
shedding itself of loose stinging leaves.
In the windowpanes are buried
those infinitely fond, frail
flowers, like a giant tear
the yellow moon hangs in a nebular garden.
The world is a garden, in which
all delights have now died,
and sound and heaven are spoiled.
The window flowers are the frozen mind.
On the many white rooftops,
on the fields, which are just as white,
the moon weeps, even in rooms
There are only a few people still walking around,
now there is one left, and then they are all gone.
Something like the weariness of nature
wants to lie down on the houses and fields.
It smiles so subtly from tree to tree,
but you can barely recognize the smile.
How miserable is the small breeze
that still travels the evening world.
I begin to feel hesitant and tired;
I consider only the gravest of men,
the moon, who grows more important,
as soon as the sun breaks free from the earth.
In the snow before me a path glimmers
black-yellow and goes on beneath the trees.
It is evening, and the air is heavy
and damp with colors.
The trees beneath which I walk
have branches like children’s hands;
they plead without end,
ineffably kind, when I stand still.
Distant gardens and hedges
burn in a dark maze,
and the glowing sky, rigid with fear, sees
The white laundry stirs quietly
in the garden, in the gentle breeze,
which blows whimsically from the sky.
The sky is half still, half wild;
it drifts halfway into the clouds,
it peeks boldly halfway through the blue.
The sun has already been forgotten
and the world readies itself
to set in a garden,
the evening; white laundry is blowing
in the evening and in the gentle breeze,
in the evening wind. Does something
inside me also stir like billowing laundry?
I do not believe it, the calm night
is already completely in charge here.
A tiny breeze no longer stirs inside me.
Turbid dreams sped
through my sleep, and
thus spoiled my sleep.
Now the shapes of night
can no longer hold on,
because morning has struck.
How gloomy this morning,
already the day’s worries
are crowding out the day,
which, above all else,
will bring me calm,
Shall I carefully pull back the curtains
before your eyes, to lead you to something
fanciful, which the forest accommodated?
The fir trees stand with a grand allure,
slender and pale with evening like folding doors,
as if the forest were now a large hall
and dreaming of the faded echo of bird sounds.
Would it be worth it for you now
to witness
how I, without regard to their pleas,
laid the girl down on the moss?
There seems to be no path passing
through the hedge to this beautiful image,
which I was allowed
to unfurl before your eyes.
Only squirrels, rabbits, crows, and deer
can be allowed to come visit her
on tiptoe.