Homecoming

By Georg Trakl

When the evening breathes golden rest

Forest and dark meadow before which

Man is a looker,

A shepherd, dwelling in the flocks’ dusking stillness,

The patience of the red beeches;

So clearly since it has become autumn. By the hill

The lonely one listens to the flight of birds,

To dark meaning and the shadows of the dead

Have gathered more seriously around him;

Cool mignonette scent fulfills him with shudders,

The huts of the villagers the elder,

Where in former times the child dwelled.

Memory, buried hope

Is preserved by these brown rafters,

Over which dahlias hang

So that the hands strive after them,

In the brown garden the shimmering step

Forbidden loving, dark year,

That from blue eyelids the tears

Of the stranger fell irresistibly.

From brown treetops dew drips,

When that one, a blue deer, awakes on the hill,

Listening to the loud calls of the fishermen

By the evening pond

To the amorphous cry of the bats;

But in golden stillness

The drunken heart dwells

Full of its noble death.