You my friend, broken eye now,
Broken glance, like that of the shot hare
Or the contemptuous, cold traitor –
Against our common twelve years sprang the wind of time,
Silently we shared books and bread,
Shared desks in the school house,
The resounding need of life’s urge,
Of some sense of recognition and tenets,
Friend, your eye is dead.
The Brimont is bare and its wood is shredded,
No spruce spared, from which to form a grave’s cross.
So you lie, silent in the shattered earth,
In oppressed dreamless sleep.
Not hero, not leader – just soldier, unknown.
Mortal remains in the wind of decay.
But the mighty peace of countless, blesséd bright legions,
When brazen and clanking they march over your grave,
You will shiver and hear of yore,
So listen and wait thereon.
From: Rhythmus der neuen Europa, first published 1921, ed. by Jakob Kneip
(Translated from the German by Penelope Monkhouse)
This poem is addressed to Engelke’s close friend August Deppe, who fell in late 1917 (the poem “To the soldiers of the great war” is also in memory of this friend). Here Gerrit not only laments the loss of his friend but also complains of the crude, non-individual way many soldiers are treated after their death and burial.