Warrior's Longing

I would like to lie in my bed
In a white shirt,
Wished the beard was gone,
The head combed.
The fingers were clean,
The nails also,
You, my tender woman,
Might provide peace.

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

After Combat

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

Prayer before Battle

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

The Suicide

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

After the Ball

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

English

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Love Song

Your eyes are bright lands.
Your looks are little birds,
Handkerchiefs gently waving goodbye.
In your smile I rest as though in bobbing boats.
Your little stories are made of silk.
I must behold you always.

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

Soldiers' Songs

1

It's good and beautiful to be a soldier for a year.
You live longer that way.    And one is certainly pleased
With each scrap of time that one snatches from death.
This poor brain, shredded by longing for the city,
Bloody from books, bodies, evenings,
Inconsolably sad and filled with every sin,
Three quarters destroyed already - can only,
Standing at attention and marching on parade,
Swinging arms and legs,
Rust gently in a corner of the skull.
Oh, the stink in a marching column.
Oh, speed-marching across a lovely land in the spring.


2

I must come one hour before the others,
Because I have shot badly.
I certainly won't be promoted.
And I must do extra drills as punishment,
Because, while the others, in accordance with orders...

Alfred Lichtenstein

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

Landscape

Like old bones in the pot
Of noon the damned streets lie there.
It's a long time since I saw you here.
A young man pulls at a girl's pigtail.
And a couple of dogs wallow in filth.
I would like to go arm and arm with you.
The sky is gray wrapping paper
On which the sun sticks - a spot of butter.

Alfred Lichtenstein

Longing

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth,
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say, My love why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Matthew Arnold