Georg Trakl

This is my English translation of "To the Boy Elis" by Georg Trakl, an Austrian poet who wrote poems in German.

Jan 17, 2025

This be the verse: 10 ~ To the boy Elis – Georg Trakl – When churchyards yawn…

To the boy Elis
by Georg Trakl
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Elis, when the blackbird cries from the black forest,
it announces your downfall.
Your lips sip the rock-spring's blue coolness.

Your brow sweats blood
recalling ancient myths
and dark interpretations of birds' flight.

Yet you enter the night with soft footfalls;
the ripe purple grapes hang suspended
as you wave your arms more beautifully in the blueness.

A thornbush crackles;
where now are your moonlike eyes?
How long, oh Elis, have you been dead?

A monk dips waxed fingers
into your body's hyacinth;
Our silence is a black abyss

from which sometimes a docile animal emerges
slowly lowering its heavy lids.
A black dew drips from your temples:

the lost gold of vanished stars.

I believe that in the second stanza the blood on Elis's forehead may be a reference to the apprehensive bloody sweat of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. If my interpretation is correct, Elis hears the blackbird's cries, anticipates the danger represented by a harbinger of death, but elects to continue rather than turn back. From what I have been able to gather, the color blue had a special significance for Georg Trakl: it symbolized longing, perhaps a longing for death. The colors blue, purple and black may represent a progression toward death in the poem.

Shannon Winestone

Jan 28, 2025

“To the Boy Elis” is one of my absolute favorites of your translations. It possesses a haunting beauty that is quite chilling. I also find Trakl’s use of color symbolism fascinating. It makes me think of how Sylvia Plath used the colors blue and red in a symbolic way.

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