BERLIN

By: Johannes R. Becher
October 26, 2025

A series dedicated to poems, published c. 1900–1935, the Radium Age sf-adjacent themes of which include: dystopia and utopia, far-out mathematics and the fourth dimension, Afro-futurism, catastrophe, future war, new technologies, scientific breakthrough, dehumanization, cosmic awe, disenchantment and unseen forces, unknowable aliens and singularity. Research and selection by Joshua Glenn; thematic index here.

Berlin! You web-monster of a white
     metropolis!
Orchestra of the aeons! Field of iron battle!
Your iridescent serpent-body was chafed as
     it rattled,
Roofed over with the refuse and rot of
     running sores!

Berlin! You rear up with the cupolas’ fist,
Around which the tempests’ swarms
     fashion dirty clods!
Europe’s faint heart trickles in your talons!
Berlin! In whose breast the brood of fevers
     dwells!

Berlin! Your groans rattle dreadfully like
     thunder!
The hot air oppresses the weak lungs.
The sludge of humans surges round your
     worm-eaten ankles.
Your head is decked with a garland of blue
     scars!

We live in a deserted cell with the moon,
Which saunters down on the narrow ridge
     of roofs.
The days’ gray froth storms to starry coasts.
On back stairs a girl was stabbed horribly.

We hang about the splendiferous
     government buildings.
We have bombs ready for the cars that
     come and go.
The blond muse meanders along the canal,
Mercury light from shops pale-violet snows
     down on her.

Fog-vapors press wet compresses onto
     pavements.
Early morning subway trains puff on
     sluggish embankments.
The old whores with the frayed mugs,
They slink into the pale and dishevelled
     morning…

— Excerpt from “Berlin.” First published 1914, in his collection of verse, Verfall und Triumph (Decay and Victory). Also appears in the 1919 expressionist anthology Menschheitsdämmerung.

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RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF POETRY: Stephen Spender’s THE PYLONS | George Sterling’s THE TESTIMONY OF THE SUNS | Archibald MacLeish’s EINSTEIN | Thomas Thornely’s THE ATOM | C.S. Lewis’s DYMER | Stephen Vincent Benét’s METROPOLITAN NIGHTMARE | Robert Frost’s FIRE AND ICE | Aldous Huxley’s FIFTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG | Sara Teasdale’s “THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS” | Edith Södergran’s ON FOOT I HAD TO… | Robert Graves’s WELSH INCIDENT | Nancy Cunard’s ZEPPELINS | D.H. Lawrence’s WELLSIAN FUTURES | & many more.