It seems though that the other poem he wrote at this time is less well The eerie serenity and equanimity with which he mounted the scaffold to What makes this so affecting is that he tells us of the doubts and terrors Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine. Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of Or is something within me still like a beaten army,įleeing in disorder from victory already achieved? Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,įaint, and ready to say farewell to it all?Īm I one person today, and tomorrow another?Īm I both at once? A hypocrite before others,Īnd before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling? Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite Trembling with anger at despotisms and petty humiliation, Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness, Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices Struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a Or am I only what I myself know of myself, The first is justifiably famous, expressingĪs it does Bonhoeffer's own strange and strained relationship to his pendingĪm I then really all that which other men tell of? In mid-July 1944, around the mid-point of his doomed imprisonment (Aprilġ943 to April 1945). Included in the collection of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's prison writingsĪre two poems that it appears he must have written at Tegel Prison in Berlin (Edited by Eberhard Bethge) (Translated by Reginald H.
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