Landschaft

As if at last, in a single instant

heaped up out of slopes, houses, fragments

of old skies and broken bridges,

and from over yonder, as if by fate,

struck by the setting of the sun,

accused, ripped open, laid bare —

the township there would end tragically:

dissolving within it, out of the coming hour

that drop of cool blue,

which already mixes night into the evening,

so that what was kindled from afar

softly, as if released, goes out.

translucent clouds are surging

over pale rows of houses,

that have already drunk the dark into themselves;

but suddenly a gleam from the moon has

slipped through, bright, as though an

archangel had drawn his sword somewhere.