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“In a Deserted Room” by Georg Trakl 🇦🇹 (3 Feb 1887 – 3 Nov 1914)
Translated from the German by Jim Doss & Werner Schmitt
Window, colorful flowerbeds,
An organ plays herein.
Shadows dance on wallpapers,
Fantastically a mad succession.
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Ablaze the bushes wave
And a swarm of gnats sways.
Far away scythes mow in the acre
And an ancient water sings.
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Whose breath comes to caress me?
Swallows draw insane signs.
Quietly there in the boundlessness
The golden woodland flows out.
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Flames flicker in the flowerbeds.
Woozily the mad succession ecstacizes
On the yellowish wallpapers.
Someone looks in through the door.
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Incense smells sweet and like a pear
And glass and chest dusk.
Slowly the hot forehead
Bends toward white stars.