Luminous Decay

Into Crimson Dark

Into crimson dark thou goest,

Thy vast orbits mock the eye.

Small the echo that thou throwest,

Far, I hear thy footfalls die.

Art thou near? - too far for greeting?

Lost in topless altitudes?

Shall I wait a sudden meeting

Where sonorous stillness broods?

In the solitude resounding

Distant footsteps echo free.

Is it thou who flamest, bounding

Circles of infinity?

Translated by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky

With My Fancy I Grasped

With my fancy I grasped at the vague shadows straying.

At the vague shadows straying where the daylight had

fled;

I ascended a tower, and the stairway was swaying,

And the stairway was swaying underneath my light tread.

And the higher I climbed, ever clearer rounded,

Ever clearer were rounded dreaming hilltops aglow;

And from heaven to Earth twilight voices resounded.

Twilight voices resounded from above and below.

And the higher I rose, strange horizons defining,

Strange horizons defining, did the summits appear;

And my eyes as I looked were caressed by their shining.

Were caressed by their shining, their farewell, sad and

dear.

Now the night had appeared; Earth in darkness lay

dreaming,

Earth in darkness lay dreaming, like a slumbering star.

While the smoldering sun, his dim embers still gleaming.

His dim embers still gleaming, shone for me from afar.

I had learned to ensnare the vague shadows far straying.

The vague shadows far straying, where the daylight had

fled;

Ever higher I rose, and the stairway was swaying.

And the stairway was swaying underneath my light tread

Translated by Avrahm Yarmolinsky and Cecil Cowdrey