This is the earlier and less well known version of Trakl's poem "Geistliche Dämmerung".
A walk in late fall: everything quieting down, getting ready for the sleep of the winter. A last time the sun breaks through the clouds...
This is Nature. Poetic nature, of course, but still Nature. Later on, age will open further internal dimensions.
And later (see Bertram Kottmann's translation above) the sky will turn liquid with opiates and the sister will resonate across the Heaven.
Sister? What kind of sister? Trakl's sister Margarete ("Grete") - intimate with (and addicted like) him?
Or one of the many nuns that served as nurses and teachers in Austria?
[Technical Note: In Austria, "Geistliche Schwester" means a Roman Catholic nun. The adjective "geistlich", which Trakl uses to describe poetical/mental twilight and night, means to an Austrian "ecclesiastical" or "clerical". The word comes from " Geist" - and "Geist" can be translated as anything from mind to spirit to ghost. (In English exist the Holy Spirit and the Holy Ghost, with some theological differences between them; in German, only "der Heilige Geist" obtains). Yet, the adjectives "geistlich" (clerical, sacred) and "geistig" (mental, intellectual) can differ greatly from one another. Whether, indeed, one considers them synonyms or antonyms is not a question of semantics but a question of faith, of Weltanschauung, and of whether and where one lives in Austria, Germany or Switzerland.]
Or, to pick up after the stuffed brackets, is the "Geistliche Schwester" really a Nocturnal Goddess, perhaps Selene?
Or is She all three and more?
Here is a quote from Heidegger, writing about Trakl: "Die Sprache des Gedichtes ist wesenhaft mehrdeutig" - meaning, roughly, "The language of the poem is ambiguous in its very nature". The key word here is "wesenhaft" (something like "pertaining to the characteristic essence of being").
Well, sure. And not just with Trakl. It is the effect, the resonance of the reader with the poem's multiple dimensions and altered states of consciousness that defines its worth. Not rhythm, not rhyme - and certainly not their absence either. (Because, admittedly and testably, more often than not it is prosody that establishes the all-important connection to the reader. Note: Others have said that much clearer and far more succinct than I: I am just too lazy to look up their quotes or pare down my ramblings.)
The point Heidegger is trying to make, albeit in heavy "philosophical" language, is that the poem, of its own nature and intrinsic necessity, is an ambiguous, multi-dimensional being. A being whose life is easily destroyed by imposing a single, rationally definable meaning. (If you like to read Heidegger's comments in German, be my guest. But forgive me for not translating them for you.)
So what does "Geistliche Dämmerung" - the title of the much better known and often anthologized later version of the poem - really mean? Just piety incarnate out on an evening stroll? Jargon for cocaine intoxication? Mystical experience of "The Dark Cloud"? Pun on "Geistige Dämmerung" (insanity)? Ghostly dusk? Ecclesiastical demise? Teutonic Götterdämmerung? The twilight of the mind, of the spirit, of God - or all of Them?
If you are used to taking such evening walks with me, you might well hoist me with my own petard: "All of what you say. All - and then some! That's why it's so beautiful...".
And, you know, you might well be right...
