from In Lovely Blue / Friedrich Holderlin

Like the stamen inside a flower   
The steeple stands in lovely blue   
And the day unfolds around its needle;   

The flock of swallows that circles the steeple   
Flies there each day through the same blue air   
That carries their cries from me to you;   

We know how high the sun is now   
As long as the roof of the steeple glows,   
The roof that’s covered with sheets of tin;   

Up there in the wind, where the wind is not   
Turning the vane of the weathercock,   
The weathercock silently crows in the wind.  

(Translated from German by George Kalogeris)