Nobody is waiting.

Mascha Kaléko is one of the most striking poets of interwar Europe, whose life was torn apart by emigration and war. Her poetry was born in Berlin, breathed the atmosphere of the "Romanisches Café," and then resonated from afar, in exile. In the collection "Nobody Waits," the reader encounters lyrics full of solitude, yet also hope—poems that transcend distances, eras, and personal tragedies to become close to everyone.

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Mascha Kaléko (born Golda Malka Aufen, 1907–1975) was a poet and a double emigrant. To escape pogroms at the beginning of the First World War, her Jewish parents, along with their children, were forced to move from Chrzanów (a city in southern modern-day Poland) to Germany. From the late 1920s, the poet began publishing verses in German newspapers and joined the circle of Berlin's creative bohemia, which gathered around the famous "Romanisches Café." Her first two poetry collections, "Lyrisches Stenogrammheft" ("Lyrical Stenographic Notebook," 1933) and "Das kleine Lesebuch für Große" ("The Little Reader for Grown-ups," 1935), brought her success and widespread literary fame. However, in 1938, the Nazi regime declared them "harmful and undesirable." In the same year, Mascha Kaléko, along with her second husband, musician Chemjo Vinaver, and son Steven, emigrated to the USA.