Classic Poem

for Georg Trakl


Autumn can last a lifetime.
There can never be enough blue and black.
Wandering has a passion of its own.
A suffering without direction.
There is only one month.
There is only one large death.
The country opens onto its unploughed fields.
A short lyric is one who passes.
Made of earth and coarse poetry.
No longer ears and eyes.
No longer indignance and inclination.
What sort of desire is unreasonable?
What sort of living?
Landscapes occur as if they were limits.
Repentance seeps from the body in breath.
Winds have speech with shadows.
Paths break into the infinity along their sides.
Autumn again after the last Autumn. Beyond, a man’s back.
He is always walking away.
He turns many times to glimpse his executions.
Empty.
The world is empty of him.
Only time is filled to the brim with his unending selves.
Everywhere they vanish like fallen snow.