Verfall And De Profundis by Henry Breneman Stewart

Lauren Treiber, mezzo soprano
Vince Kurtz, violin I
Peter Paetkau, violin II
Bryan Yoder, viola
Matt Wimmer, violoncello

Text from Gedichte, by Georg Trakl

Translations:
Verfall (Demise)
At evening, when the bells are tolling peace,
I follow the wondrous flights of birds,
Which gathered long like pious pilgrims' trains
Vanish afar in autumn's clear expanses.

Meandering through the garden filled with twilight
I dream about their brighter destinies
And scarcely feel the hours' pointers move.
So I follow their paths above the clouds.

A breath of decay then makes me shudder.
The blackbird laments in leafless branches.
The red vine on the rusty railings wavers,

While like a dance of death with pallid children
Around dark rims of wells, which slowly weather,
Blue asters shivering in the wind are drooping.

De Profundis (From the Depths)
There is a stubble-field into which black rain falls.
There is a brown tree standing there alone.
There is a hissing wind encircling empty huts.
What sadness in this evening.

Past the hamlet
The gentle orphan girl still garners frugal ears of corn.
Her eyes feast round and golden in the twilight
And her womb awaits the heavenly bridegroom.

Returning home
The shepherds found the sweet body
Decayed in the thorn-bush.

I am a shadow far from somber villages.
God's silence
I drank from the spring in the grove.

Cold metal enters upon my brow,
Spiders seek out my heart.
There is a light that goes out in my mouth.

At night I found myself on a heath,
Stiff with refuse and dust of stars.
In the hazel-bush
Crystalline angels sounded again.