It dusks. The old women go to the well.

In the darkness of the chestnuts, a red laughs.

From a shop the scent of bread trickles

And sunflowers sink over the fence.

By the river the inn still sounds tepid and quiet.

A guitar hums; a jingling of money.

A halo falls upon that small child,

Who waits before the glass door soft and white.

O! blue radiance which she awakens in the panes,

Framed by thorns, black and stiffly ecstasized.

A crooked writer smiles as if crazy

Into water, which a wild uproar frightens.

In the evening, the plague borders her blue garment

And quietly a sinister guest closes the door.

The black burden of the maple sinks through the window;

A boy lays the forehead in her hand.

Often her eyelids sink evil and heavy.

The child’s hands trickle through her hair

And his tears fall hot and clear

Into her eye sockets black and empty.

A nest of scarlet colored snakes rears up

Sluggishly in her troubled womb.

The arms release a dead shape

That is surrounded by a carpet’s sadness.

Into the brown garden a glockenspiel sounds.

In the darkness of the chestnuts a blueness floats,

The sweet coat of a strange woman.

Scent of mignonettes ; and a glowing sense

Of evil. The damp forehead bends cold and pale

Over muck, where the rat digs,

Flooded by the tepid scarlet shine of stars;

In the garden apples fall stuffy and gently.

The night is black. Ghostly the foehn billows

Through the sleepwalking boy’s white nightgown

And quietly the hand of the dead reaches

In his mouth. Sonja smiles soft and beautiful.