Ballade von der Erweckung [English translation]

Once I lay under the grass so cool

Not a sound nor a feeling disturbed me

Where rays could not find me

Neither sun nor moon, there, where I burrowed,

Why don't you let me sleep?

I rested deeply, passing the time

So far from hunger, danger and sorrow

And I began to imagine myself safe

So I lay in a wonderful comforting dress of earth

and dried my tears

So it happened that I forgot what I once was

Only the one from which I never recovered

doesn't leave my dreams

And the longing lives evermore under the cool grass

to wander between the stars

I fell from the skies, from the sea of night lights

Yes, I fell so deeply and I fell so hard

and I plunged through the darkness

And this was forever and forever and still longer ago

But I carry the stars in my heart

There I lay shattered, so naked and so bare

So lifeless under the green moss

and my wounds healed

So I lay bedded in your tender lap

forever bound with you

I dreamed of the sky in the night-black refuge

A word never escaped my lips

And yet I begged for forgiveness

And all animals fled the lonely horrifying place

Heard my soul screaming there

Yet I don't warn the stars in the moon-bright night

that call to me with all their power

I don't know where they came from

So I woke in ice-blue, cutting moonlight

and they gave me a name

They washed me, bound flowers in my hair

I tasted the drink that they offered me

The sweet, purple drink

They rubbed my body with oil, which they laid out

and carried with them like a corpse

They left me intoxicated with her alone

who had never felt a stranger's hand

And I learned new desire

after that I touched neither her nor the stars again

I will always pine for her

They tore me away, they put a

crown upon my head for adornment, hunted me like an animal

They hounded me eventually to death

They hit and hacked and buried everything

that was left of me in the ground

Once I lay under the grass so cool

Not a sound nor a feeling disturbed me

Where rays could not find me

Neither sun nor moon, there, where I burrowed,

Why don't you let me sleep?