O the moon-days of winter! Snow has fallen.
You leave after midnight, having drunk crimson wine,
the dim precincts of men. The red flame of their hearth
briefly lights the snowy path you tread alone.
Georg Trakl
O clear winter night!
A red deer steps out of the forest.
She stands in a pool of blue light
and watches the lake freeze.
The golden angel of the western sky
beats her vast wings slowly.
Her crystal tears fall
into the same lake
the deer watches. I arrive
at the lake shore. I take
my place under the yellow moon
between these fellow creatures,
one of the land, the other
of the sky, myself displaced,
at home in neither place,
seeking always somewhere to be.
The angel folds her mighty wings.
She bows her head, and the perfect
calm of her face fills me with awe.
The deer turns her head,
she slowly bites a leaf from an ash
and chews it deliberately.
The moonlight is like a tent
which encloses us in a rough triangle.
Above me
the angel hovers over the freezing lake.
Beside me
the deer stands at the water’s edge.
Here will I wait
as long as the deer and the angel.
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