Sarah Rose

Summer has grown old...

Summer has grown old and weary,
lets its cruel hands sink,
gazes emptily across the land.
It has come to an end,
it has spread its fire,
burned its flowers.

So it goes with everyone. In the end,
we look back wearily,
breathing into empty hands with a shiver,
doubting whether there has ever been
any happiness, any action.
Our lives lie far behind,
faded like fairy tales we read.

Once summer struck spring dead,
knew itself to be younger and stronger.
Now it nods and laughs. In these days,
it ponders over a whole new desire:
to want nothing more, to renounce everything,
to sink down and leave its pale
hands to cold death,
to see and hear nothing more,
to fall sleep... die out... pass away...

Rain

Warm rain, summer rain
rushes from bushes, rushes from trees,
oh, how good and full of blessings it is
to dream of being replete once again!

I was outside in the brightness so long,
I am unaccustomed to this swell:
to dwell inside my own soul,
not to be drawn towards foreign places.

I desire nothing, I ask for nothing,
I hum the quiet sounds of childhood
and in astonishment, I arrive home
in the warm beauty of dreams.

Heart, how you are torn raw
and how blissful it is to burrow blindly,
not to think, not to know,
just to feel, just to feel!

Somewhere

Through life’s desert I stray, scorching,
and let out a groan under my burden;
but somewhere almost forgotten,
I know of shady gardens cool and blossoming.

But somewhere in the dreamy distance,
I know a resting place awaits
where the soul has a home again;
I know slumber awaits, night and stars.

Gavotte

In a withered garden,
a violin sings to the thrumming bass,
an old couple jumps in step
and they smile coldly with tired expressions.

And everyone knows the other is thinking
just how different it was twenty years ago,
how hot and hand-crushed-in-hand
the same old dances were.

Reminiscing

On the hillside, the heather is blooming,
the gorse stares in brown brooms.
Who still knows today how downy green
the forest was in May?

Who still knows today how the blackbird’s song
and cuckoo call once sounded?
Already what sounded so enchanting
is forgotten and sung wrong.

The summer evening celebration in the forest,
the full moon over the mountains above,
who wrote them down, who recorded them?
Everything has already vanished without a trace.

And soon, not a soul will know
or tell of you and me either;
other people will reside here,
no one will miss us.

We want to wait for the evening star
and the first mists.
We gladly bloom and wither
in God’s great garden.

Growing Old

To be young and to do good is easy,
and to be removed from everything cruel;
but to smile when your heartbeat just creeps,
that takes learning.

And whoever succeeds is not old,
he is still brightly aflame
and bends the poles of the world
together with the power of his fist.

Because we see death waiting there,
let’s not stand still.
We want to go meet it,
we want to drive it out.

Death is neither here nor there,
it stands on all paths.
It’s inside you and inside me
whenever we betray life.

Winter day

Oh, how beautifully the light
fades today in the snow,
Oh, how tenderly the rosy distance glows! -
But summer, summer it is not.

You, to whom my song speaks every hour,
distant bridal figure,
oh, how tenderly your friendship shines on me! -
But love, love it is not.

Long must the moonlight of friendship bloom,
long must I stand in the snow,
until at last you and sky, mountain and lake
glow deep in the summer fire of love.