Strange are the nightly paths of men. As I moved sleepwalking past rooms of stone, and in each a still lamp burned, a copper candlestick, and as I sank freezing onto the bed, the black shadow of the strangeress stood overhead, and silenly I hid my countenance in the slow-moving hands. Also the hyacinth had blossomed blue at the window and the old prayer rose on the purple lips of the breathing one, crystalline tears sank from the eyelids wept over the bitter world. In this hour I was the white son in my father’s death. In blue showers the night wind came from the hill, the dark lament of the mother dying away again and I saw the black hell in my heart; minute of shimmering stillness. Quietly an unspeakable countenance stepped from the limy wall—a dying youth—the beauty of a race returning home. Moony-white the coolness of the stone embraced the waking temple, the steps of the shadows faded on decayed stairs, a rosy round dance in the small garden.

Silently I sat in a deserted inn under smoky rafters and lonely with wine; a radiant corpse bent over a dark shape and a dead lamb lay at my feet. Out of rotting blueness the pale figure of the sister stepped and thus her bleeding mouth spoke: stab black thorn. Alas my silver arms still resound from wild thunderstorms. Flow, blood, from the moony feet, blossoming on nightly paths, over which the rat shoos screaming. You stars, flicker in my arched brows; and the heart rings quietly in the night. A red shadow with a flaming sword broke into the house, fled with snowy forehead. O bitter death.

And a dark voice spoke out of me: I broke my black horse’s neck in the nocturnal forest because insanity leapt from his purple eyes; the shadows of elms fell on me, the blue laughter of the well, and the black coolness of the night, as I, a wild hunter, roused a snowy deer; my countenance died off in a stony hell.

And a drop of blood fell shimmering into the wine of the lonely; and when I drank, it tasted more bitter than poppy; and a blackisch cloud encircled my head, the crystal tears of damned angels; and quietly blood ran from the silver wound of the sister and a fiery rain fell over me.

At the edge of the forest, I will walk, a silent shape, from whose speechless hands the hairy sun sank; a stranger at the evening hill, who weeping lifts the eyelids over the stony city; a deer that stands silently in the peace of the old elder; o restlessly the dusking head listens, or the hesitating steps follow the blue cloud at the hill, also serious stars. To the side the green seed guides silently, shyly accompanies the doe on mossy forest paths. The huts of the villagers are mutely closed in silence, and the blue lament of the wild brook is frightening in the black wind-lull.

But as I climbed down the rocky path, insanity seized me and I screamed loudly in the night; and as I bent with silver fingers over the silent waters, I saw that my countenance had left me. And the white voice spoke to me: kill yourself! Sighing, the shadow of a young boy arose in me and gazed at me radiantly out of crystal eyes, so that I sank down weeping beneath the trees, the mighty star-firmament.

Peaceless wanderings through wild stone far away from evening hamlets, flocks returning home; far away the sinking sun grazes on a crystal meadow and its wild song convulses, the lonely cry of the bird fading away in blue rest. But quietly you come at night as I lay waking on a hill, or raging in a spring thunderstorm; and always blacker gloom clouds the abandoned head, horrible lightning bolts terrify the nocturnal soul, your hands tear my breathless breast.

As I walked in the dusking garden, and the black figure of evil left me, the hyacinthine stillness of the night embraced me; and I rode in a curved boat over the resting pond and a sweet peace touched my petrified forehead. Speechless I lay under the old willows and the blue sky was high above me and filled with stars; and as I died off beholding, fear and the deepest pain died inside me; and the blue shadow of the boy rose, radiant in darkness, soft chant; over greening treetops, crystal cliffs the white countenance of the sister rose on moony wings.

With silver soles I descended thorny stages and I stepped into the whitewashed chamber. Calmly a candlestick burned inside and I buried my head silently in purple linen; and the earth ejected a childish corpse, a moony shape, which slowly stepped out of my shadow, plunged with broken arms down stony abysses, flaky snow.