Georg Trakl Poems

Lend your flame to the spirit, glowing gloom;

Sighing the head rises into midnight,

At the greening spring hill; where before

A gentle lamb bled, endured the deepest
...

Soft life grows in the stillness

Step and heart hurries through the green

Loving stays at hedges,

That heavily fill up with scents.
...

Oh the nighttime beating of the soul’s wings:
Herders of sheep once, we walked along the forests
that were growing dark,
And the red deer, the green flower and the speaking
...

Over the white pond
the savage birds draw away.
At twilight an icier wind blows about our star.
The split forehead of night bends
...

In red foliage full of guitars
the girls’ yellow hair waves
at the fence, where sunflowers persist.
A golden chariot steers through the clouds.
...

Memory, buried hope

Is preserved by this brown timber,

Dahlias hang over it

Ever more silent homecoming,
...

At evening in the woods
the cuckoos withhold their misery.
The cornstalks slant deeper into themselves,
the red poppies.
...

A fool wrote three signs in the sand,

A pale maiden stood there before him.

Loudly the sea sang, o it sang.

She held a cup in the hand,
...

The blue night has softly risen on our foreheads.

Quietly our putrid hands touch

Sweet bride!

Our countenance became pale, moony pearls
...

O the dwelling in the stillness of the dusking garden,

When the eyes of the sister round and dark opened in the brother,

The purple of their broken mouths

Melted in the coolness of the evening.
...