less way of stumbling... how
human dogs express their rage...

Sometimes the representation of reflection is important. Perhaps a
poet goes mad--makes a deeper impression than--a poet stares stiffly
ahead--

Something else compelling in the poem: fear and things that resemble
reflection, like: all men must die... or: I am only a little book of
pictures... that will not be discussed here.

V

That Twilight and other poems take things strangely (The comic is
experienced tragically. The representation is "grotesque"), to
notice the unbalanced, incoherent nature of things, arbitrariness,
confusion... is not, in any case, the characteristic of "style."
Proof is: Lichtenstein writes poems in which the "grotesque"
disappears, without notice, behind the "ungrotesque."

Other differences between older poems (for example, Twilight) and
later ones (for example, Fear) in the same style are detectable. One
might observe that ever increasing idiosyncratic reflections about
landscape clearly break through. Certainly not without artistic
purpose.

VI

The third group consists of the poems of Kuno Kohn.

Alfred Lichtenstein

(Wilmersdorf)

The Athlete

A man walked back and forth in his torn slippers
In the small room
He inhabited.
He thought about the events
About which he was informed by the evening paper.
And sadly yawned, the way only that man yawns
Who has read much that is strange--
And the thought suddenly overcame him,
Like a timid person who gets gooseflesh,
And the way the person who stuffs himself
Starts to burp,
Like a mother in labor:
The great yawn might perhaps be a sign,
A nod from fate,
To lie down to rest.
And the thought would not leave him.
And then he began to undress...
When he was stark naked, he lifted something.

Rubbers

The fat man thought:
In the evening I gladly walk in rubbers,
But also when the streets are clean and spotless.
I am never entirely sober in rubbers.
I hold the cigarette in my hand.
My soul skips in little rhythms.
And all one hundred pounds of my body skips.

The Patent-leather Shoe

The poet thought: ah, I have enough trash!
The whores, the theater, and the moon in the city,
The dress-shirts, the streets, and smells,
The nights and the coaches and the windows,
The laughter, the street-lights and murders--
I'm really fed up now with all the crap,
Damn it!