I certainly don't have a problem with the lack of rime: particularly when the sonnet opens with a turn of phrase which almost forces us to hear the German (or Czech, or Polish) this was translated from:
We've talked about this earlier.
the insistence that there are things one doesn't say (or at least not here, and not now) seems to me still characteristic of central European consciousness: I find it even in conversations in bars in Mandelbachtal - at least when older folk are present.
I thought the sense that this is not the original language of the poem (not necessarily in the sense that the poem is a translation, but that the poem is avoiding saying what it most needs to say) stayed strong through most of the octave, where many of the expressions seem deliberately forced into terseness.
But 'mummified on branches' strikes a discordant note of fine writing for me, and a mildew mottled Fall seems almost Keatsian. I similarly didn't like the hint of Emily Brontė at the end: I don't think you can mix Gothic sensibilities with the inexorably terse horrors of a Gunter Eich.
I found the sonnet unsatisfying: it started so well, but then got distressingly poetic. But it did start very well.
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