Berglyrik: Satis Shroff

THE SILENCE OF THE MOUNTAINS (Satis Shroff)

A dew pearled Swiss meadow,

Early in the morning.

White and yellow butterflies

Dancing on the sparse,

Low bushes of the Alpine meadows.

Silbersidtel shining in the craggy slopes,

As I climb up and up,

Towards Bachalpsee,

Above the hamlet of Grindelwald.

I peer with awe at the Finsteraahorn and Fiescher,

Towering majestically over the glacier Oberischmeer.

The mists are rising slowly,

From the valleys and spurs below.

For what seems like ages,

The peaks are veiled

By the white, blue and grey clouds,

Revealing only bits of the blue sky.

Below the summits a long stretch of frozen ice,

And from the glacier,

Between the grey spurs,

The tremendous noise of the waterfall,

Deep into the gorge.

Schwarzhorn to the west,

Wetterhorn, Schreckhorn

And the magical Eiger Wall,

Dominating over Grindelwald.

The menacing clouds move languidly,

Above, behind and in front of the Eiger massif;

Eiger with its tales of triumph and tragedy.

A pair of Mäusebussards circle the sky,

Shake themselves in midair.

One dives to grab a scurrying mouse,

In the Alpine meadow.

As I approach the Bachalpsee,

Scores of yellow-billed Alpine Choughs,

In Latin Pyrahocorax graculus,

The jackdaws in common English,

Are flying from one craggy cliff to another:

An Alpine jackdaw convention.

The day's hasting towards dusk,

I sit here on a rock,

Listening to the silence of the mountains.

Glossary:

Silberdistel: Alpine flower, a carline thistle

See: a lake in German

Mäusebussards: buzzards that hunt mice

Wald: wood, forest

© satisshroff , Freiburg 2017