In Your World Homage For Georg Trakl Poem by Daniel Brick

In Your World Homage For Georg Trakl

Rating: 5.0


In your world Love has tentacles
which it wraps around your body
to squeeze out even that last
breath you gulped before they tightened
like a garrote. You fell into a stupor,
until they released you, suddenly,
like the limp arms of an exhausted lover...

In your world Wine is never sweet,
because the young women who tread
the red grapes let their salt tears
drop continually into the vat.
When you wave your arms, and cry out,
'Stop, stop! ' they misunderstand you,
and stop treading, but their tears,
so many tears, keep falling and falling.
When you approach them, your own eyes
glazed over, the youngest one raises her head
to face you, and you see yourself
mirrored in both of her wide, tremulous eyes...

In your world, Desires are carefully placed
in purple-tinted glass vessels, which are
carefully placed on high wooden shelves
in the attic room of an ancient mansion,
its outside walls covered with vines, and
surrounded by hedges and willow trees.
The silence of this place is never violated.
Wolves, who are friends to lovers and poets,
patrol the neighborhood with steadfast resolve...

In your world, Blue is your chosen radiance:
blue is the color of dusk and dawn,
the color of lake water and surging oceans.
Blue is the color inside the painting
you watched Kokoschka create with his nerves.
Blue is the color of Schubert's sonatas
your sister plays with intense purpose.
Blue is the color of the poems you write
in an adjacent room, suffused with autumnal glow.
And, even now your heart shining in its blue
hour, you realize blue will be the color
of Ellis's eyes when he awakes
on the morning of his Second Resurrection....

Monday, August 3, 2015
Topic(s) of this poem: homage,poetry,spirituality
POET'S NOTES ABOUT THE POEM
I first encountered Georg Trakl's poems in James Wright's volume SAINT JUDAS. The impact of my first reading of DE PROFUNDIS has never left me. Later I read and re-read a volume of his poems translated by the superlative Michael Hamburger. I once thought I would outgrow my fascination with his poems, because I wrongly thought they were dangerous. Now I realize they will be with me always, dangerous or not, because they are visionary, resplendent,
haunting and haunted, tragic and triumphant, necessary poems, as William Stafford described the poems a poet should write. Trakl is my brother. He is the persistent singer of the Blue Soul.
COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Kelly Kurt 03 August 2015

You occasionally find a voice that resonates. Let it do so, Daniel.

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Fabrizio Frosini 04 August 2015

''.. blue will be the color //.. // on the morning of his Second Resurrection '' beautiful finale.. pieno di fascino e mistero.. ma anche di angosciante speranza..

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Richard Wlodarski 19 May 2018

Daniel, although I am not familiar with Trakl's work, I can feel your heart and soul in this passionate homage. The whole poem is an excellent tribute. Exquisite vivid imagery. Writing beyond compare! Each stanza so finely crafted. I was especially attracted to the last stanza. Blue has always been my favourite colour. In my dreams and meditations, I am always surrounded with blue. It makes the meditations even more highly spiritual. Thank you for such a beautiful work of art.

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Pamela Sinicrope 27 October 2015

I FELT your poem Daniel! I hadn't noticed this one (just because you have 158! ;)) . I recently discovered George Trakl because of your grouping of poems Poems at Port Trakl. I read some of his poems and found them fascinating. You really have a strong sense and knowledge of this poet and I was surprised by some of what you wrote too. I was not aware of his focus on purple and tentacles... I am in the middle of writing another epic that contains tentacles and the color purple... Poetic Trakl device? Strange! What strikes me most about this elegy is the level of intimacy you convey with your writing; and I can sense Trakl's influence in the writing, but I still feel your optimism seeping through. This is a special piece because it comes from your heart.

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Fabrizio Frosini 05 August 2015

Well, I'll tell you all... Daniel wrote a msg to me yesterday - mmm.. maybe this very morning.. I'm not so sure, as there is a 7-hour-gap between St.Paul, MN and Florence, Italy :) - wich is also an excellent piece of comment to his own poem.. so I've thought to let you know it... Hope he's not going to feel disappointed.. - - [..] (ON) '' my Trakl poem. I've long wanted to honor him poetically but the drafts never worked, they fell flat or were over-written, more commentary than poem. But yesterday once I wrote the openng stanza about L-O-V-E (a vexed issue in Trakl - the only woman he loved was his younger sister and incest haunts his poems and his biography BUT NO ONE CAN HONESTLY CLAIM TO KNOW - only Georg and Grete k-n-o-w) But his poems are a majestic blending of praise and grief. Ellis by the way was his metaphor for that most transient of human things - y-o-u-t-h and perhaps i-n-n-o-c-e-n-c-e. BENEATH ANCIENT OAKS, YOU APPEAR, ELLIS, WITH WIDE EYES. THEIR BLUE MIRRORS THE SLEEP OF LOVERS. BTW the Kokoschka painting shows the painter and his lover Alma - Gustav Mahler's widow. OK was calling the painting THE STORM, Trakl asked him to rename it BRIDE OF THE WIND, a German idiom for both storm and woman! '' * [Daniel J. Brick] * - -

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Roseann Shawiak 04 August 2015

Traveling through this poem being pulled into it's loving depths, reading, then trying to stop seeing self in it's mirrored reflections, feeling an unknowing image watching with a steadfast resolve. Mysterious, filled with the bluened light of interior spiritualty as the persistent singer of the Blue Soul fills my entire being and soul with the Divine. Splendid poetical imagery and quiet hymn-like rhythm flowing beneath the surface of your meaning. Unbelievable depth of purpose, totally love this one! Thank you, Daniel your poetry is valued greatly by this mere poet. RoseAnn

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Fabrizio Frosini 04 August 2015

(sorry.. here is the translation from Italian) full of charm and mystery.. but also of a 'distressing' hope..

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