Poetry Magazine
Beautiful Youth
The mouth of the girl who had lain long in the rushes
looked so nibbled.
When they opened her chest, her esophagus was so holey.
Finally in a bower under the diaphragm
they found a nest of young rats.
One little thing lay dead.
The others were living off kidneys and liver
drinking the cold blood and had
had themselves a beautiful youth.
And just as beautiful and quick was their death:
the lot of them were thrown into the water.
Ah, will you hearken at the little muzzles’ oinks!
Source: Poetry (March 2011).
Biography
Gottfried Benn (1886-1956) served in the German army’s medical corps during WWI and used his clinical experiences as inspiration for his first collections of poetry, Morgue und andere Gedichte (1912) and Fleisch (1917).
Poems by Gottfried Benn
Poem Categorization
SUBJECT Living, Youth, Death, Time & Brevity, Nature, Animals, Mythology & Folklore, Horror
POET’S REGION Germany
Poetic Terms Free Verse
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