By autumnal walls, there shadows seek

At the hill the sounding gold

Grazing evening clouds

In the rest of withered sycamores.

This time breathes darker tears,

Damnation, since the dreamer’s heart

Overflows with purple afterglow,

The gloom of the smoking city;

From the cemetery a golden coolness drifts after

The walking man, the stranger,

As if a tender corpse followed in the shadow.

Quietly the stone building rings;

The garden of the orphans, the dark hospital,

A red ship in the canal.

Dreaming in the darkness

Rotting people rise and sink

And from blackish gates

Angels with cold foreheads emerge;

Blueness, the death laments of the mothers.

Through their long hair

A fiery wheel rolls, the round day

Earth’s agony without end.

Utensils molder in cool rooms

Without meaning, with bony hands

Unholy childhood

Gropes in the blueness after fairy tales,

The fat rat gnaws door and chest,

A heart

Grows stiff in snowy stillness.

Purple curses of hunger reverberate

In putrefying darkness,

The black swords of the lie,

As if a brazen gate slammed shut.