A Barkeeper's Coarse Complaint

It's enough to make me throw the chair through the panes of the
mirror Into the street -
There I sit with raised eyebrows:
All bars are full,
My bar is empty - isn't that terrific...
Isn't that strange... isn't that enough to make you puke,,,
The damned jerks - the miserable phonies -
Everyone goes right by me...
Bloody mess...
Here I am burning gas and electricity -
May God and the devil damn me to hell:
Damn It all... why is my bar the only empty one...
Grumpy, reproachful waiters standing around -
It is my fault -
Not one damned person comes to the door -
Cramped in a corner I sit with a hopeful face.
No customers come. -
The food rots, the wine and bread.
I might as well shut the joint.
And cry myself to death.

Alfred Lichtenstein

Alfred Lichtenstein was a German poet and writer known for his expressionist works. Born on August 23, 1889, in Berlin, he studied law at the University of Berlin. His works often reflect the grim realities of early 20th-century Europe and the senseless horrors of World War I. He volunteered for military service at the outbreak of WWI and was subsequently killed in action on September 25, 1914. Lichtenstein's legacy lives on through his poignant and often haunting poetry.

Alfred Lichtenstein

Return of the Village Boy

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

Kuno's Nocturne

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

A Lieutenant General Sings

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

Landscape

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Cabaret in the Suburbs

The sweaty heads of waiters tower above the room
Like lofty and powerful capitals.
Lice-ridden boys giggle nastily.
And shining girls give painfully beautiful looks.
And distant women are so very excited...
They have hundreds of red, round hands,
Still, large, without end
Placed around their high, motley bellies.
Most people are drinking yellow beer.
Grocers, their cigarettes burning, gape.
A fine young woman sings vulgar songs.
A young Jew plays the piano with great pleasure.

Alfred Lichtenstein

A Trouble-making Girl

It's certainly late.    I must earn something.
But they're all going right by today with smug expressions on their faces.
They don't want to give me a single good-luck penny.
It's a miserable life.
If I come home without money
The old lady will throw me out.
There is hardly anyone on the street any more.
I am dead tired and freezing.
I was never so miserable in my life.
I move around here like a piece of meat.
Finally someone comes over:
An extremely well-dressed man -
But in this life one can't tell much
By appearances.
He's also quite older. (they have more money,
Young ones tend to cheat you.)
We are face-to-face.
I raise my clothes above the knee.
I can get away with that.
That's the big draw..
Like flies to the light
The guys are ...

Alfred Lichtenstein

Will Waterproofs Lyrical Monologue

O plump head-waiter at The Cock,
To which I most resort,
How goes the time? Tis five oclock.
Go fetch a pint of port:
But let it not be such as that
You set before chance-comers,
But such whose father-grape grew fat
On Lusitanian summers.

No vain libation to the Muse,
But may she still be kind,
And whisper lovely words, and use
Her influence on the mind,
To make me write my random rhymes,
Ere they be half-forgotten;
Nor add and alter, many times,
Till all be ripe and rotten.

I pledge her, and she comes and dips
Her laurel in the wine,
And lays it thrice upon my lips,
These favourd lips of mine;
Until the charm have power to make
New life-blood warm the bosom,
And barren commonplaces break
In full and kindly blo...

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Barber

I stand this way on cloudy winter days
From dawn to dusk and I soap heads,
Shave them and powder them and speak
Indifferent words, stupid, foolish.
Most heads are completely shut,
They sleep limply.    And others read again
And look slowly through long lids,
As though they had sucked everything dry.
Still others open the red cracks of their mouths wide
And tell jokes.
For my part, I smile courteously.    Ah, I hide
Deep under these smiles, as though in a coffin,
The terrible, repressed, wise complaints
About the fact that we are forced into this existence,
Jammed in, firmly and inescapably trapped
As though in jail, and we wear chains,
Confusing, hard, that we do not understand.
And the fact that each man is distant and estranged from himself
As thou...

Alfred Lichtenstein

The Sad Man

No, I have no capacity for life.
I could be considered foolish -
Today I am not going to the restaurant.
I am after all this time weary of the waiters,
Who scornfully bring us, with their smug grimaces,
Dark beer and make us so confused
That we cannot find our home
And we must
Use the foolish street lights
To prop ourselves up
with weak hands.
Today I have bigger things in mind -
Ah, I shall find out the meaning of existence.
And in the evening I shall do some roller skating
Or go at some point to Temple.

Alfred Lichtenstein

Cloudy Evening

The sky is swollen with tears and melancholy.
Only far off, where its foul vapors burst,
Green glow pours down.    The houses,
Gray grimaces, are fiendishly bloated with mist.

Yellowish lights are beginning to gleam.
A stout father with wife and children dozes.
Painted women are practicing their dances.
Grotesque mimes strut towards the theater.

Jokers shriek, foul connoisseurs of men:
The day is dead... and a name remains!
Powerful men gleam in girls' eyes.
A woman yearns for her beloved woman.

Alfred Lichtenstein