Georg Trakl Translation: To the Boy Elis

To the boy Elis by Georg Trakl translation by Michael R. Burch Elis, when the blackbird cries from the black forest, it announces your downfall. Your lips sip the rock-spring's blue coolness. Your brow sweats blood recalling ancient myths and dark interpretations of birds' flight. Yet you enter the night with soft footfalls; the ripe purple grapes hang suspended as you wave your arms more beautifully in the blueness. A thornbush crackles; where now are your moonlike eyes? How long, oh Elis, have you been dead? A monk dips waxed fingers into your body's hyacinth; Our silence is a black abyss from which sometimes a docile animal emerges slowly lowering its heavy lids. A black dew drips from your temples: the lost gold of vanished stars. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: I believe that in the second stanza the blood on Elis's forehead may be a reference to the apprehensive bloody sweat of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. If my interpretation is correct, Elis hears the blackbird's cries, anticipates the danger represented by a harbinger of death, but elects to continue rather than turn back. From what I have been able to gather, the color blue had a special significance for Georg Trakl: it symbolized longing and perhaps a longing for death. The colors blue, purple and black may represent a progression toward death in the poem.