Night creeps into the cellars, musty and dull. Tuxedos totter through the rubble of the street. Faces are moldy and worn out. The blue morning burns coolly in the city....
It's certainly late. I must earn something. But they're all going right by today with smug expressions on their faces. They don't want to give me a single good-luck penny. It's a miserable life....
Drunk, Lene Levi walked In the neighboring streets nightly Back and forth, screaming, "auto." Her blouse was opened, So that one saw her fine, fascinating Underclothing and skin....
Many sick people are walking in the garden Back and forth and lying in the porches. Those who are the sickest burn with fever Every wretched day in the hot Grave of their beds....
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....
So many years I sought you, Mary - In gardens, rooms, cities and mountains, In dumps, whores, in acting schools, In sick beds and in the rooms of mad people,...
The air is gray. Who knows something good for soot? Next to an ox grazing on the ground Stands an astonished deeply serious mountaineer. Soon there is a powerful downpour of rain....
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....
In my youth the world was a small pond, Grandma and red roof, lowing Of oxen and a clump of trees. And all around the huge green meadow. How lovely was this dreaming into distance....
O you Berlin, you colorful stone, you beast. You cast me with street lamps like briars. Ah, when one flows in the night through your lamps After women, silky, plump....
A man walked back and forth in his torn slippers In the small room He inhabited. He thought about the events About which he was informed by the evening paper....
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....
The sweaty heads of waiters tower above the room Like lofty and powerful capitals. Lice-ridden boys giggle nastily. And shining girls give painfully beautiful looks. And distant women are so very excited......
A white bird is the big sky. Under it a cowering city stares. The houses are half-dead old people. A gaunt carriage-horse gapes grumpily. Winds, skinny dogs, run weakly....
The naked seats hearken strangely Alarming and quiet, as though there were some danger. Only some are covered with a person. A green girl often looks into a book. And someone else finds a handkerchief....
One must guard oneself ever so carefully against Howling, without any reason, like an animal. Against pouring beer over the faces of all the waiters, And kicking them in their faces....
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...