Ein Schatten bin ich ferne finsteren Dörfern.
-Trakl

I.

I keep wake with the thawing earth
tonight, the river sloughing off

scales of ice, all these bones
the mud sucks like a toothless mouth.

Cobwebs of fog swathe the wet firs.
Black winds whisper without end

through the well’s stone lip: a trickle
of real sound leaching into a dream.

I linger in this life, see the days, years
whirling down, winged seeds to no ground.

II.

Lit by the rust-shimmer of lanternlight,
cadaverous faces wraith the riverbank.

And even deeper into the darkness,
a cacophony of the hunger of animals,

a hunger where if slit their guts
would crackle and glow like hearths.

Ensnared in wiry branches, stars throb:
last thoughts inside a dimming mind.

I linger in this life, a tendril
of smoke uncoiling from its coal.