Reinhard Mey - Eisenbahnballade Лирицс транслатион то енглисх

Ballad of the railway

A dense fog descended upon the big and foreign town
A long day of work was behind me, I was weary and languid
Too tired for the highway, too late for today's last flight
But I wanted to go home
And so I found out
A train would be leaving at midnight
 
There was still some time, I didn't know where to go, so I stood at the station
A magnificent building of days long gone, scrambling, shoving, and pushing all about
I saw the trav'ling ones, the waiting ones, and the stranded of the night
So much indifference
So much sorrow and woe
Beneath so much ice cold pomp
 
I stepped out on the open platform, the dank air kept me awake
I shivered, turned up my collar and gazed after my breath
From the darkness hovered over the rails three headlights, my train arrived
A carriage door slammed
It was warm in the train
And I was all alone in the compartment
 
Soundlessly we rolled away and the lights of the town vanished in milky fog
And ever faster lit up windows and suburb stations flew by
One more level crossing, some headlights, and the world out there disappeared
The light from my compartment fell white
On the rail track ballast
And I could anticipate the dark country
 
And through the darkness got
The monotonous sound
Of the wheels on the stretch of tracks
A solitary song
Along the iron road
 
They stood there at the railway line with weatherbeaten skin
With their spades they had notched veins through the land
With pickaxes and hammers they had moved mountains
And put sleepers onto gravel and then rails thereon
 
In bitter cold, in torrid heat, in rain day after day
The nights spent on a paillasse on the floor of a wooden shed
And up again at break of day to earn their meagre pay
And another fortune yet for the iron baron
 
And soon the iron horse snorted about, emitting sparks
Some novel industries and some new empires emerged
Some incalculable wealth, but on every inch of tracks
Every bridge and every tunnel, there were tears and blood and sweat
 
The railway carried progress---technological revolution---
To every corner, until the most far-away station
Carried goods from the harbours to the borders of the Alps
Connected towns and people and brought wealth upon the state
 
But the tragic sticks to every great invention
That it can serve for peace but for wars as well, in time
Endless trains of armament soon rolled by day and night
War material and cannons were their clamant freight
 
Already were the stations crowded with the army men
Some cheers upon their lips and with flowers on their guns
In waggons draped with flags and watchwords for the win
To Lemberg or to Lüttich, to Krakow or to Mons
 
In the drumfire of Verdun the triumph died away
The trains turned into lazarets, and the railways witnessed now
The retreat of the beaten and---in defiance of warlords---
In a waggon in Compiègne forest, the capitulation
 
Millions dead on the battlefield, pointless misery
The ones who got home found hardships, distress, and unemployment
But on the soil of collapse already sprouted
The traffickers, the war profiteers, the speculation
 
But also from the confusion of entangled politics
Emerged the frail and tender sprout of the first republic
But small-mindedness, stupidity and violence stomped it down
With combat boots all on their way to the thousand year long Reich
 
The monsters were the rulers, the world watched silently
And again they said: 'Wheels must turn now for our victory!'
Thus started the darkest chapter of the nations
The darkest of the winged wheel: The deportation
 
Locked inside the boxwagons, penned in, like livestock
Starving, distraught, naked and freezing were they
Helpless women and men, doters and children even
On the bitter journey, whose goal was the death camp
 
But then the fury of the humbled descended upon them
No village was reprieved, no stone left on a stone
And bombs were cast until the country was ablaze with flames
The cities eradicated and scorched was all the land
 
The war was much more gruelling than any war before
And punished were the people who conjured it up outrageously
Through wreckage and through ruins they all roamed hungrily
The survivors, the bombed out ones, no way forward anymore
 
And ever longer were the refugee tracks every day
And strayed through a country that was razed to the ground
The will to live alone forced them to carry on
The folornness forced to try the impossible
 
To still jump up when there was a hoarding train leaving somewhere
When there was a cluster of people hanging on every door
To sit upon a buffer, on a footstep with some luck
With hope for just some flour, potatoes, or some lard
 
What lay on the embankment was gathered up by kids
And many an honest man stole from a coal train
And then returned the trains with the repatriates on board
Wounded, lacerated, tattered and threadbare
 
Many a drama occurred next to those tracks!
Searching, tears of joy, for those reunited
Waiting, hoping, and asking: 'Will he be with them today?'
Many came abortive, and many left alone
 
Engines and waggons, shot to pieces were patched up
And left loose on a net of tracks that was mostly bizarre
And the pulse began to beat, and from nothing soon arose---
Loaded with hopes and dreams---a new country
 
And through the break of dawn got
The monotonous sound
Of the wheels on the stretch of tracks
A melancholic song
Along the iron road
 
The chugging of wheels over a turnout brought me back to the scene
Bleary-eyed I had woken up, almost at the goal of my ride
I rubbed my eyes and stretched a bit, the neon light shone dim
And in the empty cabin
Between waking and dream
I saw them one more time
 
The Adler, the Flying Hamburger, the Prussian P-8
And the Legendary 05 snorted through the night before me
An opposite train on the other tracks pulled me out of my dreams
A look at the watch
Ten minutes to go
And I'd be home for breakfast
 
For moments I could look into lit up windows outside
Saw the people on their way to work stand at the suburban stations
Saw the headlights of the cars before the boom gate at the railway crossing
And a hope lay
Within the new day
And within the sunrise
 


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