1. THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT

When the dark lord told me to live
I felt the raised lust of possession

Afterwards the death yell of an impaled nineye
Gotten through my dutiful ears

I had to think of all the lost creatures
Which strived of their existence
In the streaming of my black blood

Nocturnal shadows, which glorified
The resurrection like trumpets
Offered me the right way into hopelessness
Enlighten my path into inaccessible license


2. APOCALYPTIC DANCE

In coldness of my dark bowel
A yell after mercilessness
Bequeaths a trace of eternal destruction
To my decency

Uneven throbbing shadowfire
Streams with raised melancholy
Through twisted channels
Of my forbode grief

In the black storms
Of my mental agony
The deliverance ripens
In form of a godless dusk
The faceless ancient
Grasps with stony miming
Into the cradle of mercy
And severs the blood stained flag

But still it seems to me
That the lightbringer
Spreads a shining shroud
Over the shadow being
Of an owl which died in chains

As the rock in me bursts asunder
The round dance of the colouring
Grows up in my twilight


3. SECOND COMING

Black hopelessness
Venoms the hidden unholiness
Of your withered virgin

Speechless remonstration
Grinds the arches
Of your risen dominion

Dark superstition
Drinks coagulated blood
Of your blasphemic lust

The age of the glorified god
Yields to a cold endlessness
Which, with vivid stiffness
Awaits my resignation

The second coming
The faceless lash
In the unholiness
Of my destination


4. VARGTIMMEN

[Music by Bartsch/Matton December '92]
[Poems by Bartsch November '93]

The banished sorrow
Buried in aurora
Causes lifeless emotion
In the flame of my faded heart

If dead life immerses in dawn
And the shade of my schism
Is to be lost into brightened blackness
Death will be the only redemption


5. 3RD NOCTURNAL PRAYER

(instrumental)


6. FUNEREAL OWLBLOOD

The night grows pale
As with faint wing stroke
The cradle of decay
Emerges from the ruins of reason

The roaring silence
Sinks under the new trial
Which escapes with speechless ardor
Into decline

I tasted the morning dew
On a withered leaf
And forgot the acrimonious unrest
Which awoke during the moon-shine

Coz' only me is the frame and the blood
And i open your door into autumn


7. VEILED IRRELIGION

Desire's my saying
Final's my appearance
Care-worn's my glance
Apathetic's my devotion

Through yearning rises
Out of deep dark chasm
Up to deceased brightness
With the original power of life

A black feathered bird
Trips softly in the surge
A last sunbeam illuminates
In a bleeden darkness


8. GEPRIESEN SEI DER UNTERGANG

Durch unglückselige Weiten
Einer unbefleckten Sonnenferne
Schreitet langsam Fußes
Das letzte Sakrament, bereit,
Die Tür zu öffnen,
Welche das Vergessen
In seiner glorreichen Allwissenheit
Meiner sterblichen Leere offenbart

Es ist nicht die Asche
Welche auf mein Haupt regnet
Es ist viel mehr
Die gekreuzigte Verdammnis
Welche der Wiederkehr
Meiner filigranen Unrast entsagt

Hoch am dämmrigen Firmament
Erklimmt meine Geduld
Die Versagung meiner frühen Sühne

Denn ich bin das Geleit
Der erhabene Schönheit
Des Todes.

[English translation:]

[Praised be the downfall]

Through treacherous vastness
Of an untouched distant sun
Slowly striding on foot
The last sacrament, readily
Opens the door,
To Obliveon
In its' glorious omniscience
Revealing my empty mortality

It isn't the ashes
Which rains upon my head
But rather
The confused damnation
That reconsiders
My renounced restless filigree

High on the dawning firmament
Climbs my patience
Denying my early repentance

For I am the guardian
Of exalted beauty
Of death


9. SUPPLEMENTARY EXEGESIS

(instrumental)


10. WINTERMUTE

(instrumental)