Invasion

Decline already -
But that was quick...
Hardly a trace of rising -
I have grown above the whole world.
I have become the complete God
And horribly awake.
And now I must cast away death.
My death is mute
And without images...
Without redemption -

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

A Barkeeper's Coarse Complaint

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

Falling in the River

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

Moonscape

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

Touched

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

English

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

Cloud

A fog has destroyed the world so gently.
Bloodless trees dissolve in smoke.
And shadows hover where shrieks are heard.
Burning beasts evaporate like breath.

Captured flies are the gas lanterns.
And each flickers, still attempting to escape.
But to one side, high in the distance, the poisonous moon,
The fat fog-spider, lies in wait, smoldering.

We, however, loathsome, suited for death,
Trample along, crunching this desert splendor.
And silently stab the white eyes of misery
Like spears into the swollen night.

Alfred Lichtenstein

Touched

I gladly left
The noisy death of the city,
With its thousands of leering faces,
The yellow night of the alleys.
I stride into the broad,
Silver sky;
The pious limbs glide
Deep into gently being.
I am in the white brightness
Of cloud, meadow, wind.
Am tree, am town, am child...
How wet are my eyes!
Soon the green evening will stand
At its silver end...
I raise blessed hands -
I want to go to meet it -

Alfred Lichtenstein

Bad Weather

A frozen moon stands waxen,
White shadows,
Dead face,
Above me and the dull
Earth.
Throws green light
Like a garment,
A wrinkled one,
On bluish land.
But from the edge
Of the city,
Like a soft hand without fingers,
Gently rises
And fearfully threatening like death
Dark, nameless...
Rising
Without sound,
An empty slow sea swells towards us -
At first it was only like a weary
Moth, which crawled over the last houses.
Now it is a black bleeding hole.
It has already buried the city and half the sky.
Ah, had I flown -
Now it is too late.
My head falls into
Desolate hands.
On the horizon an apparition like a shriek
Announces
Terror and imminent end.

Alfred Lichtenstein

The Grenade

First a bright, brief drum roll,
A bang and explosion into the blue day.
Then a noise, like rockets climbing on
Iron rails.    Fear and long silence.
Then suddenly in the distance smoke and a fall,
A strange hard dark echo.

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

Ash Wednesday

Yesterday I still went powdered and addicted
Into the many-colored sounding world.
Today everything has long since drowned.
Here is a thing.
There is a thing.
Something seems like this.
Something seems otherwise.
How easily someone blows out
The whole flowering earth.
The sky is cold and blue.
Or the moon is yellow and flat.
A forest has many individual trees.
There's nothing more to cry about.
There's nothing more to scream about.
Where am I -

Alfred Lichtenstein