Cayla’s Reviews > Poems > Status Update

You will hunt me down from death to birth
On the painful track of the creations,
The glorious track of the creations.
3/3

I will be born again, flowers,
Tree and grass I will be born again,
Fish and deer, bird and butterfly.
And out of every form,
Longing will drag me up the stairways
To the last suffering,
Up to the suffering of men.
2/3

All Deaths
I have already died all deaths,
And I am going to die all deaths again,
Die the death of the wood in the tree,
Die the stone death in the mountain,
Earth death in the sand,
Leaf death in the crackling summer grass
And the poor bloody human death.
1/3

And you shall know that whatever is noble
In your soul is always a warrior
Even though he bears no weapons,
That every day a struggle and a destiny is waiting.
Do not forget this I
Think of the blood, the shambles, the ruin
On which your own future reposes,
And how, even more, upon death and sacrifice is builded
The tiniest happiness.
Then your life will flame out more
And one day gather even death
Into its arms.
4-4

Is only a loan, and that whatever was lost
In the past, and the heir you long for,
And the farthest future,
Rolls through your blood,
And that for every hair on your head
Somebody endured one struggle, one pain, one death.
3/4

And if my wish for you has any power,
So war will remain
For you, always, only a dim legend,
So you will never stand in the field
And never die
And never rush out of a house crumbling in fire.
Nevertheless, you will be soldiers one day
And one day you will know
That the sweet breath of this life,
The precious possession of the heartbeat,
2/3

To Children
(AT THE END OF 1914)
You know nothing of time,
You know only that, somewhere in the distance,
A war is being fought,
You whittle your wood into sword and shield and spear
And play your game blissfully in the garden,
Set up tents,
Carry white bandages marked with the red cross.
1/3

Waves through the world, and within it
The thousand stars, shuddering, turn pale.

Woods dream my dream,
House and pear tree tell me
The forgotten story of common childhood.

The world and my self, everything
Within and without me, grows into one.