Gloom

A sawmill stands within the wood.

I used to pass it as a child.

A hundred years have since gone by?

Old I am not nor a young blood.

Yet I know in noisy streets and wild:

A water drops and drips,

And throws with swift, with blue hair mild

Upon the wheel its power of blessedness.

Today the elder-tree’s already out of bloom,

And yesterday it creaked in frost and snow!

Who can know this? I long for home,

The while at home I come and go.

I have just leaped out of bed, and tire thus soon.

Boys dash about and roll wild in the grass.

Under the old pump they stick their faces hot.

These are none of them my comrades, I know them not,

And yet my mouth is dripping wet from the past.

I am a seed that’s hither set

From a foreign world.

This is not my planet.

Yet right in the sun my stem I’ve dropped,

And oft it’s seized by such a mighty bliss,

As if there leaned by some mere slit

Its brothers true and parents through the copse.

There are dewdrops.

But in a forest old as this,

Holy water drips, drops.

Now before the farm of night I stay.

The watchman asks: What have you done this day?

With my kisses I have scorched

Those who most with love me gorged.

The watchman asks: What have you in your hand?

A lark’s ashes, in the fire of morning fanned.

The watchman asks: What have you to declare,

Indistinct form?

Out of all farces and faces this I bear:

Within the wood there stands a sawmill.

Franz Werfel