Heads off for prayer!
Oh God, our dirty and muddied old bones
Have crept forth once more from the trench’s chalky stones.
We appear before you to pray and do not remain silent.
And ask you, Oh God:
Why?
Why have we given our heart’s blood away?
While the Kaiser’s six sons all living do stay.
We once believed….Oh how stupid we were…!
They made us all drunk….
Why?
One man screamed in his hospital bed for six months,
Before dry food and staff doctors finished him off.
Another became blind and took opium secretly.
Three of us between us have only one arm…
Why?
Faith, life, war and everything else we have lost
It was they, the powers, who tossed us into it
Like film gladiators.
We had the best audience,
But it didn’t die with us.
Why? Why?
Lord God!
If you really are there as we daily do learn
Descend from starred heaven and show your concern!
Come down to us mortals or send us your son!
Tear the flags down, the orders, the decoration!
Announce to the countries of the earth how we have suffered;
How hunger. lice, shrapnel and lies our bodies have covered!
Chaplains have carried us to our graves in your name.
Declare they have lied! Is it us that you blame?
Chase us back to our graves, but answer us clear!
We kneel before You as best we can –but please lend us your ear!
If our dying has not been completely without point,
Do not anoint us with another year like 1914!
Tell the people and drive them to desert!
KURT TUCHOLSKY (1890-1935)
Kurt Tucholsky was a German-Jewish journalist, satirist, and writer. He served on the Eastern Front in the First World War. He later observed the rise if Facism in Germany, latterly from the safety of self-exile in France, then Sweden. the Tucholsky Prize, a 150 000 SEK grant to a persecuted, threatened or exiled writer or publicist, is given in his honour annually.
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