Gerrit Engelke
To Death
But spare me, Death.
I am still young -
My work has not been done,
The future is still unknown -
So spare me, Death.
Some time later, Death,
When my life has been lived, has burned away
Into my work, and I
Have nothing left to say -
Then take me, Death.
Gerrit Engelke, ‘the German Wilfred Owen’, was born in 1890 and joined the army reluctantly, believing that it would interfere with his work. ‘No people hates the other’, he wrote, ‘it is the powerful speculators without a conscience who manage the war’. He was badly wounded on 11th October 1918 and died in a British field hospital two days later.
Translated by Merryn Williams
Page(s) 65
magazine list
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