Retrospective

 

Poetry       Prose       Letters

Georg Trakl

 

To the Boy Elis

Elis, when the blackbird calls in the black woods,
This is your decline.
Your lips drink the coolness of the blue rock-spring.

Cease, when your forehead bleeds softly
Ancient legends
And dark interpretations of the flight of birds.

But with tender steps you walk into the night
That hangs full of purple grapes,
And you move the arms more beautifully in the blueness.

A thorn bush tinges
Where your moon-like eyes are.
O, how long, Elis, have you been dead.

Your body is a hyacinth
Into which a monk dips his waxy fingers.
Our silence is a black cavern

From which a gentle animal steps at times
And slowly lowers heavy eyelids.
On your temples black dew drips,

The last gold of expired stars.

 

© Jim Doss & Werner Schmitt

 

             

Poetry       Prose       Letters

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