As your ways shot me seventh-spherewards

As your very being sent me tearwards

And I through you in measurelessness reveled,

Were not millions with oppression leveled,

Careworn and thrust out from mankind rearwards?

 

As your ways shot me seventh-spherewards,

Work lay all around us and Earth sniveled.

And void there was, godless cold disheveled,

There lived and died so many never cheerwards!

 

When I was filled with you like a balloon,

So many there were, tramping down in the dumps,

Shrinking at desks and steaming at boiler pumps.

 

You who gasp on streets and rivers yet!

If life and world have equilibrium,

How shall I have to satisfy this debt?

 

Franz Werfel