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

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

Evening

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

The Cabaret in the Suburbs

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

Ash Wednesday

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

The Battle at Saarburg

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

English

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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

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

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

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

Going for a Walk

Evening comes with moonshine and silky darkness.
The roads become weary.    The narrow world widens.
Winds of opium move in and out of the field.
I widen my eyes like silver wings.
I feel as though my body were the whole earth.
The city lights up: thousands of street lamps sway.
Now the sky also piously enkindles its candlelight.
...    Huge above everything my human face wanders -

Alfred Lichtenstein

Evening

Houses stand stiffly next to their fences.
Let your eyes, last sparrows, flutter.
Bluebottles alight on your face.
Don't you, Kuno, feel the eternal mills -
The unfeeling one bores holes in your head.
Look once more at the moon, the mustard-pot murderer.

Alfred Lichtenstein