*

As soft as timid animals they sleep

Within this hall, or in secluded rooms,

Not hearing aught but what the mind doth keep

To tell itself when eyes fall under gloom –

The words that odd things show, woeful or sweet.

 

Outside, the crystal points through blackness swim,

And some do lose their hope, and fall to earth –

But most throughout the ceaseless void shall spin,

To only die once spent is all their worth,

All bright things whelmed by tides of spilling sin.

 

Speak I to nothingness, and yet this speech

Comes when it will, as though it sought night’s dark

To lose its way, and waking ears not reach –

For tells it fearsome word: the quaking heart,

And doom and dimness which the madmen preach.

 

Where warm waves pass above a woman’s limbs

And man beside her dead form sobs for wrath,

The great king on his seat looks down on him –

But high beyond king’s head, the dark sky hath

A new light: gold and gorgeous, red and grim.

 

That brilliance pours all ’cross the grieving sphere

Suspended ’twixt a void and burning tree

So that, in one sole place, ne’er’s shed a tear

And through all age shall live this prophecy:

In that deep nook, winter slays not the year.

 

Amid a golden wall a gate soft opes –

A breeze is loosened: laughter’s on its lips,

The child’s laugh; and through each time doth it blow,

Its grace and pity: Grace each soul doth kiss,

While pity of it whirls, ’til gate be closed.

 

Yet tell I too the phantom and the dread:

The ship, the broken sky, and leaping horse

At end of span immense – when all the dead

Shall add themselves to deluge and flame’s force,

And horror’s mouth with innocence be fed.

 

Then shall the flood be universe entire,

And no beam break – all motion have its rest.

No ice shall be, and neither shall be fire,

No heart begin within the stirless breast

Of empty eons, ashes of the pyre…

 

And yet, I see – and now I whisper this,

Lest any hear – as close my blue-cold eyes,

To sleep at last: some sparkle of new bliss

That at the far end of time’s ring doth lie:

The flame of man and woman – gentlest kiss.  

*

*

(detail of a work by Emil Doepler)

*