The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein | Page 5

lie down to rest.
And the thought would not leave him.

And then he began to undress...
When he was stark naked, he lifted
something.
Rubbers
The fat man thought:
In the evening I gladly walk in rubbers,
But
also when the streets are clean and spotless.
I am never entirely sober
in rubbers.
I hold the cigarette in my hand.
My soul skips in little
rhythms.
And all one hundred pounds of my body skips.
The Patent-leather Shoe
The poet thought: ah, I have enough trash!
The whores, the theater,
and the moon in the city,
The dress-shirts, the streets, and smells,

The nights and the coaches and the windows,
The laughter, the
street-lights and murders--
I'm really fed up now with all the crap,

Damn it!
Whatever will be will be--it's all the same to me:
The
patent leather shoe Hurts me. And I take it off--
People might turn
around, surprised.
Only it's a shame about my silk socks...
Smoke on the Field
Lene Levi went out in the evening,
Mincing, her skirt bunched up,

Through the long, empty streets
Of a suburb.
And she spoke weeping, aching, crazy,
Strange words,
Which the
wind tossed, so that they popped,
Like pods.

They made bloody scratches on trees,
And, shredded, hung on houses

And in these deaf streets
died all alone.
Lene Levi went out, until all
The roofs made their crooked mouths
grimace,
And the windows and the shadows
Made faces
They had a completely drunken good time--
Until the houses became
helpless
And the mute city passed
Into the broad fields,
Which
the moon smeared...
Little Lene took out of her pocket
A box of cigarettes,
Weeping
took one
Out and smoked.
Dreaming
Paul said:
Ah, but who wouldn't want to drive a car forever--
We burrow our
way through high-stemmed woods,
We pass by spaces that seem
endless.
We pass through the wind and attack the towns, which speed
up. But the odors of the sluggish cities are hateful to us--
Ah, we are
flying! Always alongside death...
How we despise and scorn him who
sits on our lives!
Who lays out graves for us and makes all streets
crooked--ha, we laugh at him,
and the roads, overcome, die with us--

Thus we shall auto our way through the whole world...
Until, on
some clear evening
We find a violent ending against a sturdy tree.
The Sad Man
No, I have no capacity for life.
I could be considered foolish--

Today I am not going to the restaurant.
I am after all this time weary
of the waiters,
Who scornfully bring us, with their smug grimaces,

Dark beer and make us so confused
That we cannot find our home

And we must
Use the foolish street lights
To prop ourselves up

with weak hands.
Today I have bigger things in mind--
Ah, I shall

find out the meaning of existence.
And in the evening I shall do some
roller skating
Or go at some point to Temple.
Capriccio
Here is the way I shall die:
It's dark. And it has rained.
But you can
no longer detect the imprint of the clouds
Which up there cover the
sky in soft silk.
All streets are flowing, black mirrors,
Over the
piled up houses, where streetlights,
Strings of pearls, hang shining.

And high above thousands of stars are flying,
Silver insects, around
the world--
I am among them. Somewhere.
And sunken, I watch
very seriously, somewhat pale,
But rather thoughtful about the
refined, heavenly blue legs of a lady,
While an auto cuts me to pieces,
so that my head rolls like a red marble
At her feet...
She is surprised.
And swears like a lady. And kicks it
Haughtily with the dainty heel

Of her little shoe
Into the gutter.
The Turk
A totally perverse Turk bought for himself,
Out of grief for the recent
death
Of plump Fatme, his favorite wife,
From his white-slaver,
two former mannequins, in quite good condition--
You could almost
say: brand new--
Just imported from France.
When he had them, he
sang, in celebration of himelf:
Sit down on my thighs.
Hold me around my loins.
With your sweet
tongues
Stroke my tearful cheeks.
Ah, you have such beautifully
bejeweled
Eyes and such clear hands,
Weariest of my wives,
And
such long, gentle legs.
Tomorrow I buy six pairs of new
Stockings
of the thinnest silk
As well as very small, black silk shoes.
And in
the evening you will dance
Soft, false dances
In the new silk shoes


And new silk stockings.
In the garden. In the sun.
Close to the
water.
But at night I'll have you whipped
By four smiling eunuchs.
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 though from a