This one is dedicted to my fellow author, friend and brother Jasmin Horst Seiler, Gross Gott!

Winter, ice getting everywhere, making
hard as iron the leather of your boots,
nineteen years old soldier and yet
six months of combat made him much old,
freezing breeze getting everywhere,
uninvited squatter inside your fox-hole,
and then, nearly Christmas one night,
we heard a woman rasping voice,
telling us about Lily Marlene…
“vor der kaserne vor den grossen tor”
coming from the enemy positions
making all of us to long after home,
and I am sure that the other soldiers,
those Germans nineteen years old
were thinking of many girl friends
perhaps living by their house’s next door,
but we that couldn’t understand German
Oh man! Yes!…we really understood.

Winter, holding paper and pencils, maybe
saying goodbye in case not going home
from an unmerciful and white landscape
turning red by so many soldiers blood;
to get to a few evils they offer so many
in the year of the Lord nineteen forty four;
buddies hugged together getting covered
by like traveling sand dunes made of snow,
breathing monuments of indestructible humans
to get the combatant buddies a little more warm,
because it can’t be on going much more longer
they heard of saying about that damned war,
perhaps the other side were hearing the same
as they was sharing the same piece of world,
plowed by cannons to sowed more death seeds
on nights encrusted with diamonds by the millions
as the soldiers heard that woman singing to them
“Vor der kaserne vor dem grossen tor…”