"Listen closely, little one, they say there is tinplate, there is the world, check if they are not lying." Ilse Aichinger's collection of poems 'Verschenkter Rat' has been regarded as a highlight of German-language post-war poetry since its publication. The call for independence and for dissent against state, societal, and religious expectations is proclaimed in simple verses that are all the more subversive in their simplicity. These poems speak of loss, of grief, and of devotion, of the lost places of childhood, of violence and the achieved non-violence, of the joy of heightened perception, and of the resistance that seemingly simple contemplation teaches.