Retrospective
Dusk
In the courtyard, bewitched by milky twilight,
Gentle sick people glide through autumn-bronze.
Their waxy-round gaze ponders golden times
Filled with daydream and rest and wine.
Ghostlike a wasting illness surrounds them.
The stars spread white sadness.
In grayness, filled with delusion and pealing of bells,
See how the frightful scatter in confusion.
Formless figures of ridicule, they shoo, crouch down
And flutter on black-crossed paths.
O! mournful shadows on the walls.
The others escape through darkening arcades
And at night they fall from red shudders
Of the starry wind like raging Maenads.
© Jim Doss & Werner Schmitt
