All day - like any day: comprised of little work
And many a trifling care.
Their ghosts will pointlessly walk
Past your fatigued stare.

You worry, - but deep inside submissive:
If it doesn't pan out - let it fail.
And at the bottom of your soul, black and depressive,
Sadness and disbelief prevail.

And then the tide of your day's cares
By evening surges back.
When at the frosty dark the city stares
And midnight's struck, -

You'd like to fall asleep, but - what an awful moment!
All other thoughts aside -
The senselessness of any deed, the joylessness of comfort
Visit your troubled mind.

And silent anguish does so gently squeeze your throat:
Unable to groan, or gasp,
As if the night has spread the damnation over the whole world,
The devil himself has caught you in his grasp!

You jump out of bed and run into the stone-deaf streets,
But there is no one to help you out:
Wherever you turn - only the darkness meets
Your vacant eyes and follows you about.

There the wind will keep on moaning overhead
Until the pale sunrise;
A police guard, in order not to fall asleep, will apprehend
A vagrant by surprise...

And finally the longed-for weariness will set in,
And you will not care a bit...
What? Conscience? Truth? Life? It's such a little thing!
It makes one laugh, well, doesn't it?

January 2019