A forgotten poem...

 

A stranger to himself, inside him grew a tree

On its own soil – he did not know its name

As a distant dream his life appeared to be

While near as in a dream was the unknown…

 

Then this he felt he could no longer bear,

And set out one morn at break of day;

He saw dark clouds towering in the air

Night still hung feather-light along the way.

 

He saw the horizon redden in a glow,

The sun brought death to dark and gloom,

The ice exploded, out of his distress there flowed

The first word from his heart: the ‘dawn’.

 

Rudolf Ditzen

from ‘Gestalten und Bilder’ (Shapes and Images), unpublished manuscript