Poetry Magazine
Fragments 1953
A day without tears is a rare occurrence
culpable absent-mindedness
practically an episode
•
when men still wore starched collars,
and stuffed cotton wool between their toes
hobbled about in pain, pedicure hadn’t been invented,
but you would see faces that were worth a second look
those were years when something whispered
Source: Poetry (March 2012).
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, Disappointment & Failure, Time & Brevity
POET’S REGION Germany
Poetic Terms Free Verse
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