A village, a field step out of brown walls.

A shepherd rots on an old stone.

The edge of the forest includes blue animals,

The soft leaves, that fall in the stillness.

The peasants’ brown foreheads. The evening bell

Sounds long; beautiful are pious customs,

The Savior’s black head in the thornbush,

The cool room that death reconciles.

How pale the mothers are. The blueness sinks

On glass and chest, which their mind proudly preserves;

Also a white head bends highly aged

Over the grandchild, who drinks milk and stars.

The poor one, who died lonely in spirit,

Rises waxen over an old path.

The apple trees sink bleak and calm

Into the colors of their fruit, which blackly spoiled.

Still the roof of dried straw arches

Over the sleep of the cows. The blind maid

Appears in the yard; a blue water laments;

A horse’s skull stares from the rotten gate.

The idiot speaks in dark mind a word

Of love fading away in the black bush,

Where she stands as a slender dream-figure.

The evening sounds forth in moister blue.

At the window branches knock defoliated by foehn.

In the womb of the peasant woman a wild pain grows.

Black snow trickles through her arms;

Golden-eyed owls flutter around her head.

The walls stare bleak and gray-soiled

In the cool darkness. In the fever-bed

The pregnant belly freezes, insolently goggled by the moon.

Before her chamber a dog has died.

Three men step sinisterly through the gate

With scythes broken in the field.

Through the window the red evening wind rattles;

From it a black angel steps out.