From Lidové noviny, August 1936

by Karel Čapek (1890–1938)

When this century collapses, dead at last,
and its sleep within the dark tomb has begun,
come, look down upon us, world, file past
and be ashamed of what our age has done.

Inscribe our stone, that everyone may see
what this dead era valued most and best:
science, progress, work, technology
and death—but death we prized above the rest.

We set new records, measuring men and deeds
in terms of greatness; thus we tempted fate.
In keeping with the greatness of our needs,
our heroes and our gangsters, too, were great.

The 20th century, buried; nonetheless,
world, see what eras yet to come will gain:
Great new records, great inventions. Wretchedness.
Dictators. War. A ruined town in Spain.

Miserable

by Josef Čapek (1887–1945)

(from Poems from a Concentration Camp,
written in Bergen-Belsen, published 1946)

I was there in body, but in spirit, with all of you.
In every thought, I was only with you.
I saw only you and not what was going on there.
My soul was here; only my body was there.
How happy am I again, here among all of you!
I—that is to say, I—in truth, is it me?—
Oh yes—it is me.  Only my body stayed behind, there in the foreign land.
My body was taken by the foreign land.