Deutschland
Through the grill of my cell
I see children playing.
Pinned there, shrinking there,
prison-years… torture-years…
Germany,
your sons will
no longer play
as children.
poem by Ernst Toller
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November
Cities are so far away, humans live there.
The knot chokes at your throat, a gray
horror caresses your limbs. Who will freedom behold?
When, at last, will the grubs rise up?
poem by Ernst Toller
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Nightmare
The people's conscience squats
on a worm-eaten pole.
Around the pole dance the bones of three children.
From the young mother's belly it ruptures forth:
the sheep's pulse bleats baa baa.
poem by Ernst Toller
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For the Dead of the Revolution
Death-prone, the bodies
forked in mutiny
against the collar
of the uncooked plague,
your destiny cleansed
with the dark gesture.
By whom the paths are prepared,
to sink upon the grill,
death pitches forward still
before him, in reverence.
poem by Ernst Toller
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To the Trench
Through shell-holes,
puddles of mud,
they trudge.
Over frozen
men in foxholes
they stumble.
Rats dart whistling across the distances.
Dead fingers rain down
& tap on rotting doors.
Signal-rockets,
corpse-lanterns…
To the ditch, to the ditch.
poem by Ernst Toller
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Sentry
Starry sky.
To restrain the beast
my rifle glows,
to fix the black barrel
to the milky moon.
The cry of the Snowy Owl.
A baby whimpers in the village.
The bullet,
treacherous wolf,
bursts into the sleeping house.
The night smells of lime-tree blossoms.
poem by Ernst Toller
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Factory Smokestacks At Dawn
They chisel their force into the dawning sky.
They forge their steeled selves on the precipice.
They split through the fog like axes
so that each breath shatters around them.
Morning announces itself with purple laughter.
The sky floods deep blue.
They keep watch,
barbed and shaven and grey,
naked there and as lost
in the ether. God is born.
poem by Ernst Toller
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Spring
In spring I go to war
To sing or to die.
What do I care for my own troubles?
Today I shatter them, laughing in pieces.
Oh, Brothers, know that young spring came
In a whirlwind.
Quickly throw off tired grief
And follow her in a host.
I have never felt so strongly
How much I love you, Oh, Germany,
As the magic of spring surrounds you
Amidst the bustle of war.
poem by Ernst Toller
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Twilight
In early evening the cell flares up.
Thin shadows slide down the gray walls.
He who cries out in mutiny exhausts into a dream.
The brown stillness sweeps over like a gentle wave.
And often a frosted light fills the choked room.
Figures beckon you to the spiritless circle
where the dance of the heavy coats dissolves into silence,
where dawn breaks into a ringing of bells.
poem by Ernst Toller
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The Visitor
The walls shriek with the eyes
of mangled pigeons, the weasel's glittering teeth,
the aimless thrashing of the terrified.
The heart clings to the prisoner's hand.
Forever it beats, song of the deserted,
as snipers circle about him.
And still he emerges from the crush of frozen cells.
Absorbed in the spirals of a choked life,
he looks to the interior, drinks from God's spring—
And the visitor shivers. He comes for nothing.
poem by Ernst Toller
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