English translation of "To the boy Elis" by Georg Trakl
This is my modern English translation of the poem "To the boy Elis" by Georg Trakl.
Blood Roses
These are poems about blood roses. The rose is a symbol of love and tendernesss, but it is also the color of blood …
Frantisek “Franta” Bass was a Jewish boy born in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1930. When he was 11, his family was deported by the Nazis to Terezin, where the SS had created a hybrid Ghetto/Concentration Camp just north of Prague (it was also known as Theresienstadt). Franta lived there under terrible conditions for three years. He was then sent to Auschwitz, where on October 28th, 1944, he was murdered at age 14.
The Sorrow and the Pretty, A Proem Upon "The Fallen Chrysanthemums" - Confessions of Nightingale, One Who Did Not Leap
*********
escape to chrysanthemum clouds
now too too crowded
for six falling, the sad young
men who leap from bridges:
Tyler Clementi, Raymond Chase,
Asher Brown, Billy Lucas, Seth Walsh,
Justin Aaberg
Chrysanthemums in hand
clutched for support: