Viennese night specter

What drives through the wind so late at night?
It’s the street sweeper, my child!
It cleans the streets — it’s a horror! —
If you get in its way, you’re done for.
It knows how to find any germ,
It whirls it up, hands it over to the winds,
And what was lying around before, quietly at rest,
It scatters in all directions in no time.
The desert wind, I’m not overstating,
Is child’s play against this work.
And if you’ve just nicely swallowed the tubercles,
That these brooms spit out all around,
Then there is consolation: another process
is being studied — I think for fifteen years!
(Die Muskete, Vienna, 1912)