A Happy End Poem by Herbert Nehrlich

Oh, that your lovely flesh be there for me
a thousand miles I must, on blood-stained boots
hike through the corpses of man's hate for man
and carry only one, an ever-longing thought.

A bullet on a mission with the sound of scorn
and weaving on its path of wild destruction
flies by me, humming like a goddamn bumblebee
I'm telling blistered feet to be my friends.

What if, I say with hollow trepidation
another man, yet from another land
has claimed the prize before I stagger home,
it will not leave me and becomes its own obsession.

And then, a nightingale, sits on the knotted branch
of a tall tree that shows the ravages of war,
and sings the sweetest song that Nature could conceive
she sings for me and tells about my distant love.

It is enough to hear the sounds of this fine music
new powers penetrate my worn exhausted bones,
time is suspended altogether like a dream
and on the steps up to her door I weakly stumble
to catch the ambience of this thing called Happy End.