Gradually I became aware of details: a company of French soldiers was marching through the streets of the town. They broke formation, and went in single file along the communication trench leading to the front line. Another group followed them.
quote 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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Corpses In The Woods
A dung heap of rotting corpses:
Glazed eyes, bloodshot,
Brains split, guts spewed out
The air poisoned by the stink of corpses
A single awful cry of madness.
Oh, women in France,
Women of Germany
Regard your menfolk!
They fumble with torn hands
For the swollen bodies of their enemies,
Gestures, stiff in death, become the touch of brotherhood,
Yes, they embrace each other,
Oh, horrible embrace!
I see and see and am struck dumb
Am I a beast, a murderous dog?
Men violated
Murdered.
poem by Ernst Toller
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