Round us the town is at rest; the street, in pale lamplight, grows quiet And, their torches ablaze, coaches rush through and away.
People go home to rest, replete with the day and its pleas- ures, There to weigh up in their heads, pensive, the gain and the loss,Finding the balance good; stripped bare now of grapes and of flowers, As of their hand-made goods, quiet the market stalls lie.
But faint music of strings comes drifting from gardens; it could be Someone in love who plays there, could be a man all alone
Thinking of distant friends, the days of his youth; and the fountains, Ever welling and new, plash amid fragrance from beds.
Church-bells ring; every stroke hangs still in the quivering half-light And the watchman calls out, mindful, no less, of the hour.
Now a breeze rises too and ruffles the crest of the coppice, Look, and in secret our globe’s shadowy image, the moon,
Slowly is rising too; and Night, the fantastical, comes now Full of stars and, I think, little concerned about us,
Night, the astonishing, there, the stranger to all that is human, Over the mountain-tops mourn- ful and gleaming draws on.
translation by Michael Hamburger
