Golden blooms the tree of graces
		Drawing up the earth's cool dew.
	

		Wanderer quietly steps within;
		Pain has turned the threshold to stone.
		There lie, in limpid brightness shown,
		Upon the table bread and wine.
	

The two last verses of the second stanza and the third stanza read in the first version (Letter to Karl Kraus, December 13, 1913):

		Love's tender power, full of graces,
		Binds up his wounds anew.
	

		O! man's naked hurt condign.
		Wrestler with angels mutely held,
		Craves, by holy pain compelled,
		Silently God's bread and wine.
	

(Cf. the new Swiss edition of the poems of G. Trakl edited by Kurt Horwitz, 1946.)^*

The poem was written by Georg Trakl. Who the author is remains unimportant here, as with every other masterful poem. The mastery consists precisely in this, that the poem can deny the poet's person and name.

The poem is made up of three stanzas. Their meter and rhyme pattern can be defined accurately according to the schemes of metrics and poetics. The poem's content is comprehensible. There is not a single word which, taken by itself, would be

*[Georg Trakl, Die Dichtungen. Gesamtausgabe mit einem Anhang: Zeugnisse und Erinnerungen, edited by Kurt Horwitz. Zürich: Arche Verlag, 1946; This poem, "Ein Winterabend," may also be found in Die Dichtungen, 11th edition. Salzburg: Otto Muller, 1938, p. 124. The letter to Karl Kraus may be found in Erinnerung an Georg Trakl: Zeugnisse und Briefe, Salzburg: Otto Muller, 1959, pp. 172-173.—Tr.]