Nature Theater

By Georg Trakl

Now I step through the slender gate!
Promiscuous step in the avenues
Drifts away and quiet waft of words
From people, passersby.

I stand before a green stage!
Begin, begin again, you play
Of lost days, without crime and punishment,
Ghostly only, strange and cool!

To the melody of the early days
I see myself going up there again,
A child whose quiet, forgotten lament
I see weeping, strange to my understanding.

You wondering face turned to the evening,
Was I once this, that now makes me weep,
Like your still unfinished gestures
That point to the night mutely and shuddering.

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