"And I saw that my face had abandoned me"

" I want to walk by the forest hem, a thing of silence from whose speechless hands the sun has slipped with his bright hair, a stranger on the hillside of evening who weeps and opens his eyelids above the stony city, a deer that stands still in the peace of the ancient elder. O the darkening head lies listening without repose, or the hesitant footsteps follow the blue cloud on the hillside, follow also its solemn stars. At my side the green seed escorts me in silence, the deer is my companion on mossy forest paths. The huts of the villagers are dumbly shut and the wail of the brook brings fear in the windless blackness. But when I went down the rocky path, madness took me and I screamed aloud in the night. And when I bent down with silver fingers over the silent waters, I saw that my face had abandoned me. And the white voice said to me: “Go kill yourself.” With a groan the shadow of a boy rose up within me and looked at me with radiant eyes so that I fell down weeping under the trees, under the mighty vault of the stars." 

-- from Offenbarung und Untergang [Revelation and Apocalypse] by Georg Trakl, 1914/1915  (trans. Max Wickert)

'Untitled 3' from Offenbarung und Untergang by Georg Trakl, by Etant Donnés and Michael Gira

 

Coil - 'It's In My Blood' from The Ape of Naples (2005) - published posthumously after the death of John Balance in November 2004; the album was originally to be named 'Fire of the Mind'. Artwork by Ian Johnstone.