I saw many towns as if robbed by flame

And the times accumulated atrocity after atrocity,

And saw a lot of people putrefy to dust,

And everything float into oblivion.

I saw the gods fall to the night,

The holiest harps powerlessly smashed,

And kindled anew from putrefaction,

A new life swelling to the day.

Swelling to the day and again passing,

The eternally identical tragedy,

That thus we play without understanding,

And its insanity’s nightly torture

Wreathes the soft glory of beauty

Like a smiling universe of thorns.

(#3 From Georg Trakl’s Three Dreams )