The poet Mascha Kaléko was "almost famous" in the early 1930s; her short, witty, whimsical poems perfectly captured the Zeitgeist of the late Weimar Republic. But as a Jew, she was forced to flee Germany and found sanctuary in New York City, and then later Jerusalem. Cut off from the air supply of Berlin dialect she struggled to find her lyric voice. Her later poems are tinged with sadness and loss – loss of her beloved Berlin, loss of her family (she was predeceased by both her husband and her only child). In the poem Ich werde fortgehn im Herbst she anticipates her death in obscurity – the promise of her youth vanished in the autumn mist. The poem was published posthumously – she died in 1975 (in winter).
Ich werde fortgehn im Herbst
von Mascha Kaléko (aus Heute ist morgen schon gestern)
Ich werde fortgehn im Herbst
wenn die grauen Trauerwolken
meiner Jugend mich mahnen.
Keine Fahnen werden flattern
keine Böller knattern
Krähen werden aus dem Nebel schrein
Schweigen, Schweigen, Schweigen
hüllt mich ein.
Ich werde gehen wie ich kam
Allein.(I will go in autumn
I will go in autumn
when the grieving grey clouds
remind me of my youth
No flags will fly
No salute will fire
Out of the fog crows will cry
Silence, silence, silence
Envelopes me.
I will go as I came
alone.)
