MUSIC IN THE MIRABELL

by Georg Trakl

A Fountain sings. The Clouds stand
In the clear Blue looking tender.
Deliberately silent People go
In the Evening by the old Garden. 

The Ancestral Marble is gray.
A train of birds clips in the far Wide 
A Faun with dead Eyes looks
Toward Shadows in their Dark slide.

The Leaves fall red from the old Tree
And circle in through the open Window.
A Firelight glows in the Room 
And paints trumpeted Fear-of-phantoms.

A foreign Stranger enters the House.
A Dog rushes by a dilapidated swing.
The Maid snuffs a Lamp out
The Ear hears night's Sonatasounds. 

GEORG TRAKL

1887 - 1914

The original poem

is engraved in German

upon a plaque in Mirabell
Garden, Salzburg Austria

(translation courtesy

of Shaun Lawton

SLC Nov 2014)

THORNSWRATH

(And man’s groupmentality grew
and grew until it threatened to
blot out even the Sun.
Thus was borne into the pupils
of a new generation
the spark necessary to light
the fuse which would race
upstream to blow out this growing
smog of obfuscating filth.
Even the roses curl up
in abject defiance,
to lend their thorns
to my wrath.

Dubbed a knight for the Guardians
of Ambush, I pledged my allegiance
to no army but that of the trees,
23 years ago: A heraldic Oak
has lain its branch upon my shoulder
in the land of New Canaan,
in the year of my reckoning, 1988.

Upon my fierce countenance
the world’s facade splits apart
into halves: the chasm lain exposed
between has become my battleground
and new home.

Trolling for gemstones
slipped under the bridge.
Lost in a full moon reflection
wavering on black water.
Aspiring to be a hero to
every son and daughter.)