SEASONABLE NIGHT

Now Time blooms more

 and more ice-flowers,

 thorns of frozen silence,

 wire-barriers:

 silent assassins

 - the air sifts mists of itself,

 and sifts mists of itself:

 sorrows, bitternesses,

 self-pity float like boats

 from the lake of broken looks.

 Now Winter starts a heart-war,

 the frozen ice-rocks

 are rattled by the empty frost

 - she will not come, 

because they will not let

 the deer-eyed girl come for me,

 for whom I once fought 

and struggled with my pessimism! 

And still the wounded dirt

 of the alley-smelling city barely clears.

 Rather like a choking,

 thick tar,

 It grows as the darkness must descend.

 Thirty years beyond the mirror,

 yawning, you find an old man:

 The contented existence has fallen by his side,

 - For he knew it, and proclaimed it,

 and because he alone willed it so!

 Our dreams shall return no more

 - the rainbow-possibility

 of our imagination

 May be for prodigal posterity! 

Beside me the lonely prophet:

 the three-hent cone

 of the mountain-ridge

 yawns its sorrows,

 its petty griefs, to a beat:

 I watch the time-worn basalt,

 the andesite relations of the mute stone:

 the wonder of matter,

 which is changing in its course,

 still lingers, 

rubbing on the fabric of recognition! 

The thunder of lightning rushes on,

 its knife-warring death-dance 

is received with growing dumbness

 and doubt by the taming sheep of the cloud!

 - And in the galactic dwellings

 of the spangling stars,

 spaciously lonely cosmos, 

with murderous patience,

 like diligent report-wishers,

 they explode, 

wounding even the vulnerable Night!