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

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

Sunday Afternoon

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

Into the Evening

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

Rubbers

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

Evening

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

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Winter Evening

Behind yellow windows shadows drink hot tea.
Yearning people sway on a hardened pond
Workers find a soft woman's corpse.
Glowing blue snows cast a howling darkness.
On high poles a scarecrow, implored, hangs.
Stores flicker dimly through frosted windows,
In front of which human bodies move like ghosts.
Students carve a frozen girl.
How lovely, the crystalline winter evening burning!
A platinum moon now streams through a gap in the houses.
Next to green lanterns under a bridge
Lies a gypsy woman.    And plays an instrument.

Alfred Lichtenstein

Summer Evening

All things are seamless,
As though forgotten, light and dull.
From the sacred heights the green sky spills
Still water on the city.
Glazed cobblers' lamps shine.
Empty bakeries are waiting.
People in the street, astonished, stride
Towards a miracle.
A copper red goblin runs
Up towards the roof, up and down.
Little girls fall, sobbing
From the poles of street lights.

Alfred Lichtenstein

Sunday Afternoon

Packs of houses squat along rotten streets,
Around whose hump a gray sun shines.
A perfumed, half crazy little poodle
Casts exhausted eyes at the big world.
In a window a boy catches flies.
A badly soiled baby gets angry.
On the horizon a train moves through windy meadows:
Slowly paints a long thick stroke.
Like typewriters hackney hooves clatter.
A dust-covered, noisy athletic club comes along.
Brutal shouts stream from bars for coachmen.
Yet fine bells mix with them.
On the fairgrounds where athletes wrestle,
Everything is dark and indistinct.
A barrel organ howls and scullery maids sing.
A man is smashing a rotting woman.

Alfred Lichtenstein

Into the Evening

Out of crooked clouds priceless things grow.
Very tiny things suddenly become important.
The sky is green and opaque
Down there where the blind hills glide.
Tattered trees stagger into the distance.
Drunken meadows spin in a circle,
And all the surfaces become gray and wise...
Only villages crouch glowingly: red stars -

Alfred Lichtenstein

After the Ball

Night creeps into the cellars, musty and dull.
Tuxedos totter through the rubble of the street.
Faces are moldy and worn out.
The blue morning burns coolly in the city.
How quickly music and dance and greed melted...
It smells of the sun.    And day begins
With trolleys, horses, shouts and wind.
Dull daily labor cloaks the people in dust.
Families silently wolf down lunch.
At times a hall still vibrates through a skull,
Much dull desire and a silken leg.

Alfred Lichtenstein

Morning

...    And all the streets lie smooth and shining there.
Only occasionally does a solid citizen hurry along them.
A swell girl argues violently with Papa.
A baker happens to be looking at the lovely sky.
The dead sun, wide and thick, hangs on the houses.
Four fat wives screech in front of a bar.
A carriage driver falls and breaks his neck.
And everything is boringly bright, healthy and clear.
A gentleman with wise eyes hovers, confused, in the dark,
A failing god... in this picture, that he forgot,
Perhaps did not notice - he mutters this and that.    Dies.    And laughs.
Dreams of a stroke, paralysis, osteoporosis.

Alfred Lichtenstein