Now of course I put on my straw hat. Rain has washed the evening blue. How the world glows! I look up piously, My hands deep in my trouser pockets. If the morning drives me home with screams and stones, Half dead, stripped of my skin, Yet I'm ready for the night! I shall soon be happy! Street lamps blaze. Kitchen maids screech! Elegant Morning The street looks like eternal Sunday. Lightly summerhouse rests against summerhouse. Chauffeurs wheel by grandly. Three fine citizens glide by quietly. A song flies coolly out a window. From a distance the wind carries a child's shout. And in front of the villa of a duke stands, All dressed up, like a stiff doll, In a brightly colored scarf, red as a poppy, The royal Bavarian legal apprentice, Doctor of Jurisprudence Kuno Kohn. Farewell It sure was fine to be a soldier for a year. But it is finer to feel free again. There was enough of depravity and pain In these merciless human mills. Sergeants, Barrack walls, farewell. Farewell canteens, marching songs. Lighthearted, I leave the city and capitol. Kuno is leaving, Kuno is never coming back. Now, fate, drive me where you will. I am not tugging on my jacket from now on. I lift my eyes into the world. A wind is starting up. Locomotives roar. Farewell (Shortly before departing for the theater of war) for Peter Scher Before dying I am making my poem. Quiet, comrades, don't disturb me. We are going off to war. Death is our cement. If only my beloved did not shed these tears for me. What am I doing. I go gladly. Mother is crying. One must be made of iron. The sun sinks to the horizon. Soon I shall be tossed into a gentle mass grave. In the sky the fine red of evening is burning. Perhaps in thirteen days I'll be dead. Romantic Journey Thousands of stars twinkle in the gentle sky. The landscape glows. From the distant meadow Mute marching men slowly come closer. Only once a young Lieutenant, a page boy in love, Steps out--and stands lost in thought. The baggage train waddles along at the rear. The moon makes everything much stranger. And now and then the drivers cry out: Stop! High up on the shakiest munitions truck, Like a little toad, finely chiseled Out of black wood, hands gently clenched, On his back the rifle, gently buckled, A smoking cigar in his crooked mouth, Lazy as a monk, needy as a dog --He had pressed drops of valerian on his heart-- In the yellow moon, ridiculously mad, Kuno sits. 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. Prayer before Battle