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.