Berlin, 1912: Gottfried Benn publishes his first literary work - a collection of his expressionistic and nihilistic poetry under the title "Morgue und andere Gedichte" (Morgue and other Poems). At that time he worked as a trained physician in the hospital in Moabit, working-class locality of Berlin. Doing the autopsies during the day and writing in the night, he made his emotionless, cold poems about dead human bodies and people dieing of cancer. The morbidity of his verses and especially Benn’s indifferent attitude are still shocking the readers who don’t recognize that the blade of his cynical scalpel is not cutting dead bodies, but absurdity and falsity of life around him. My favourite poem from "Morgue" is "Kleine Aster", here in English version by Scott Horton: 

Little Aster

A drowned driver of a beer truck was dumped onto the table.
Someone had stuck a dark-pale lilac-colored aster
Between his teeth.
I cut out the tongue and gums
With a long knife
Working from the chest outwards
Under the skin,
I must have touched it, because it slid
Into the brain right next to it.
I packed it into the chest cavity,
Between the wood shavings,
As it was being stitched up.
Drink up in your vase!
Rest sweetly,
Little Aster!

Here is the original text:

Kleine Aster

Ein ersoffener Bierfahrer wurde auf den Tisch gestemmt.
Irgendeiner hatte ihm eine dunkelhellila Aster
zwischen die Zähne geklemmt.
Als ich von der Brust aus
unter der Haut
mit einem langen Messer
Zunge und Gaumen herausschnitt,
muß ich sie angestoßen haben, denn sie glitt
in das nebenliegende Gehirn.
Ich packte sie ihm in die Brusthöhle
zwischen die Holzwolle,
als man zunähte.
Trinke dich satt in deiner Vase!
Ruhe sanft, 
kleine Aster!