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“In a Deserted Room” by Georg Trakl 🇦🇹 (3 Feb 18873 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.
Ablaze the bushes wave
And a swarm of gnats sways.
Far away scythes mow in the acre
And an ancient water sings.
Whose breath comes to caress me?
Swallows draw insane signs.
Quietly there in the boundlessness
The golden woodland flows out.
Flames flicker in the flowerbeds.
Woozily the mad succession ecstacizes
On the yellowish wallpapers.
Someone looks in through the door.
Incense smells sweet and like a pear
And glass and chest dusk.
Slowly the hot forehead
Bends toward white stars.