As The 100th
Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars)
Continues ... Some Remembrances-Poet’s Corner-German Jewish Poets
LEO STERNBERG (1876-
OUT OF THE TRENCHES
1 THE BROTHERS
The man has submerged in the great army;
The army has disappeared into the earth; far away lies the sea
Of night-
Lost breezes pass between home and enemy land,
They meet and fade away.
And patrols rise up from the trenches like ghosts from the grave
A helmet appears large for a moment before the night sky.
Then the whispering troop disappears in the stormy woods.
Only the wind rustles in the tree-
Patrol meets patrols and stamps like shadows past each another
And one recognizes, from a voice in the dark, his brother and like a choked cry
Whispers are heard as they pass: Wilhelm? Heinrich? Mother wrote today?.
“Greetings” Till we meet again!”
And then they disappear in different directions in the darkness
The forest paths gleam brightly lit broadly by a flare
Again sunken in the night: shots from the forward posts
Silence of the hostile world.
2 THE RELIEF
We lie snowed in the trenches like snow-
Unknowing mirrors of the days and nights that roll over us,
In the foremost trenches, cut off from the help of the world
In front of the gun barrels of the enemies who aim across the level field,
Our breasts, like our raised earth wall, only a defense
Our death cry only a signal for the army
Behind us, We are only the feelers and the nerve cord
On which the burning town in the night and the flare pistols play their song
Every whispered word, heard at the front
Every step, that hisses in the trenches before us
Until the hour of relief nears, when suddenly out of the foggy night
An unknown person stirs us, who will watch for us and continue the fight.
And we reach our comrade, whom we do not see.
Through the fog we grasp his hand and take up the rifle and start to go.
Then before we leave our post,
A bullet lies before us in the snowy clods atop the trenches edge.
Leo Sternberg -
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