Tracing By Gottfried Benn

...

And in the rain,
falling on the leaves,
I hear an old forest song,
from forests I crossed
and saw again, but I didn't return
to the hall where they were singing,
the keys were silent,
the hands were resting somewhere,
apart from the arms that held me,
moved me to tears,
hands from the eastern steppes,
long since trampled and bloody -
only the forest song
in the rain
dark days of spring
the everlasting steppes.