Eisenbahnballade [English translation]

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

• Artist:Reinhard Mey
• Album:Balladen