The Battle at Saarburg

The earth grows moldy in fog.
The evening is as oppressive as lead.
Electric sparks crackle and whimper all around,
Breaking everything in two.
Like wretched hobos
Cities are smoking on the horizon.
I lie, God-forsaken,
In the rattling front line of defenders.
Many copper enemy birds
Buzz around heart and brain.
I stand firm in the grayness
And defy 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

Afternoon, Fields and Factory

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

Smoke on the Field

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

Kuno's Nocturne

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

Rainy Night

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

English

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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

Monday in the courtyard of the barracks

The heat sticks closely to the gun and to the hand.
It pricks the eyes.    Nothing remained forgotten.
The troops stepped, half drunk, into the fire.
The non-coms stand rigidly in front.
The glaring earth is a dead carousel.
Nothing stirs.    No one drops down.    No streaked sky flies.
Only rarely a hoarse barking tears apart the blue sow
Which lies on the stone barracks.
Now the army leaves me alone.
Who still pays attention to me.    They got used
To my strange civilian eyes long ago.
On maneuvers I am half dreaming,
And as we march I compose poems.

But war comes.    There was peace too long.
No more good times.    Trumpets screech
Deep into your heart.    And all the nights are burning.
You freeze in tents.    You're hot.    You're hungry.
You d...

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 End

Like a white fungus, a lump of wind covers
The green corpse of the lost world.
Frozen rivers form an iron dam
Which holds together the rotten remains.
In a small rainy corner stands
The last city in stony patience.
A dead skull lies - like a prayer -
Slanted on the body, the black penitential bench.

Alfred Lichtenstein

Rainy Night

The day is ruined.    The sky is drunk.
Like false pearls, little stumps
Of chopped up light lie around and reveal
A glimpse of streets, a few clumps of houses.
Everything else is rotten and devoured
By a black fog, which, like a wall,
Falls down and is rotten.    And the rain
Crumbles like rubble in the grip - thick - gray -
As though the whole contaminated darkness
Wanted at every moment to sink.
Down in a swamp you see an auto flash,
Like a strange, drunken plant.
The oldest whores come crawling
Along out of wet shadows - tubercular toads.
There goes one creeping by.    Over there a pig is being stabbed.
The gushing rain wants to wipe out everything.
But you are wandering through the waste lands.
Your dress hangs heavy.    Your shoes are soaked.
Y...

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