Confiteor Poem by Georg Trakl

The colored pictures which life paints,

I see them gloomily only by twilights,

Like frizzy distorted shadows, cloudy and cold,

Hardly born, already defeated by death.

And since the mask fell from every thing,

I see only fear, desperation, disgrace and plagues,

Mankind's heroless tragedy,

A bad play, staged on graves, corpses.

This terrible dream-view disgusts me.

But a higher authority wants me to stay,

A comedian who speaks his role,

Coerced, full of desperation - boredom!