English Translation

And the old mother plants died, although perhaps they still had power in them for centuries to live; for they were strong trees underneath, yes, not only individual trees, whole coniferous forests as well as deciduous forests and perished. In all the areas that the wool grasses had to wander through, these or similar things had happened. The deadly wool grasses produced new seeds everywhere. But further south, where the seeds germinate, in central Germany, there was even more terrible need. Here the plants could not evade the grim frost further to the south; for there in the south the Alps stormed with their eternal ice and snow. From these glaciers, too, the glaciers had come further and further into the valley, just as from the slopes of the Norwegian mountains. From the Alpine glaciers the warm-loving plants fled north, from the Nordic glaciers they fled south. In central Germany the refugees of the south and the north met together. Another escape was impossible. So countless plants died here. But* not only the individual plants died, here whole species went to reason. — But the ice from the north and south did not advance so far that all of Germany would have been covered in a blanket for thousands of years. In central Germany remained an area that still had ice-free summers. Here the wool grasses stopped. Here they survived the ice age. From here they gradually moved back to their Nordic homeland as the ice went back. But there were still wool grasses left in the swamps and on the bogs of Germany and served here for the preservation and reproduction of their kind. They are the ones that annually transform our dark bogs into a white foam of the sea. This is the quiet song, the secret story that hovers over the moor from the early years to the autumn. It is a hero song from the woolen grasses from far away. Once My ancestors land, you! only the stars, Allle fathers went to rest who are above? became earth and stood on Mo es aud seí, again out of you! also over me Finmal also ends my run. once the plow goes, then I lie here aud out of me or somewhere once the ears sprouted, far in the distance, and over the plaice that no one finds me, quietly the mind strikes. FLORIAN SEIDL 27