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The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht

Page 17

by Tom Kuhn


  On exertion

  1

  We smoke. We besmirch ourselves. Drink ourselves over

  We sleep. We grin at a naked face.

  The tooth of time gnaws too slowly, my lover!

  We smoke. Write a poem. Trot off to the shithouse.

  2

  Unchastity, poverty, they are our vows

  Unchastity often has sugared our innocence.

  The things a man did in God’s sun, for those

  In God’s earth he will do his penance.

  3

  The spirit made whores of the joys of the flesh

  When it pulled the hairy hand’s claws off us

  The sun’s sensations can no longer push

  Through our skin, it’s like vellum: impervious.

  4

  Mornings, no make-up, how do you look then

  Oh you green islands in tropical zones?

  The white hell of visions is only a broken

  Wooden shack that leaks when it rains.

  5

  And we, the betrothed, what drug shall be ours?

  Furs of sable? Oh gin does it better!

  A lilac mixture of sharp liqueurs

  With flies in, drunk-drowned, tasting bitter.

  6

  We ascend in our boozing to toilet water.

  We dole out the schnapps with black coffee but no

  Such thing works, Maria, it’s better

  We tan our delicious skins with snow.

  7

  With the cynical poverty of frivolous verse

  A bitterness with an orange taste

  Cooled in ice, and Malayan plucked hairs

  In your eyes, oh the opium-smoke haze

  8

  In wind-crazed huts made of paper of Nankeen

  Oh world with your bitter good cheer

  When that gentle white creature, the moon

  Falls from the skies that are colder than once they were!

  9

  Oh heavenly fruit of the maculate conception!

  Brother, what perfection did you ever see here?

  With kirsch you will toast your cadaver’s defection

  And with little lanterns of delicate paper.

  10

  Early morning awake, a grin comes along

  On hairy teeth with the nicotine waste

  And often we find when we yawn on the tongue

  A bitterish sort of orange taste.

  On climbing in trees

  1

  When you rise from your waters in the evenings—

  For you must be naked and your skin be soft

  Climb after that then into your big trees

  In a light wind. And in the sky no colour left.

  Big trees that in the evening blackly

  And slowly rock their crowns, choose those

  And wait for nightfall in among their leaves

  Nightmares and bats encircling your brows.

  2

  The small hard leaves in the foliage

  Will notch your back, which you must brace and raise

  Hard through the branchings: so you climb

  Groaning a little, higher among the boughs.

  Rocking on the tree is nice. But don’t employ

  Your knees to rock yourself. Instead be

  Rather as the tree’s own crown is to it

  Which it has rocked at evening for a century.

  On swimming in lakes and rivers

  1

  In the pale summer when the winds above

  Sough only in the leaves of the big trees

  Then you must lie in rivers and in ponds

  Like waterweed in which the pike house.

  The body gets light in water. If the arm

  Lightly out of the water falls into the sky

  The small wind rocks it in an absent way

  Thinking it a brown branch very likely.

  2

  The sky offers great stillness at midday.

  You close your eyes when swallows come to you.

  The mud is warm. When cool bubbles rise

  You know: that was a fish that swam through you.

  My body, the thighs and the still arm

  We lie still in the water, all one

  Only when the cool fish swim through us

  I feel the sun is shining over the pond.

  3

  When in the evening after a long time lying

  You are very indolent and your limbs sting

  Heedlessly fling all of it with a splash

  Into blue rivers whose pull is very strong.

  Best thing is you hold out till evening

  For then the pale shark-skies arrive

  Evil and ravenous, over river and bushes

  And all things are as they must be to thrive.

  4

  Goes without saying, you must lie on your back

  In the normal way. And drift where the current will.

  You need not swim, no, but behave as if

  You simply belonged to the shoals of gravel.

  The right thing is to look at the sky and lie

  As though a woman were carrying you, which she is.

  Quite without any fuss, as God the Father does

  When He comes at evening and swims in His rivers.

  Orge’s reply on being sent a soaped rope

  1

  Often he sang he’d be very glad

  If his life could be better:

  His life is indeed very bad—

  Better than he is, however.

  2

  The rope and the soap are welcome:

  It’s a disgrace, of course

  How filthy he has become

  Here on this planet of ours.

  3

  There are hills and dales, he says

  He’s never set eyes upon:

  Best off then are the choose-

  iest—best off in passing on.

  4

  As long as the sun is still near

  He says it’s not too late:

  And he’ll wait so long as it’s still there

  And—so long as it’s not yet night.

  5

  There are trees still, any number

  Of shady agreeable trees

  To hang yourself up above from

  Or beneath to take your ease.

  6

  However, his last reality

  No man is glad to give up.

  Yes, he’ll swear this eternal verity

  On his last piece of crap.

  7

  Not till with disgust and bile he

  Has had it up to here

  Will he blankly and no doubt coolly

  Slit from ear to ear.

  Ballad of any man’s secrets

  1

  Everyone knows what a man is. He has a name.

  He walks on the street. He sits in a bar.

  You can see his face, you can hear his voice

  And a woman washed his shirt and a woman combs his hair.

  But strike him dead, and we shan’t mind

  If never again in his own self he

  Was there as the doer of his iniquity

  Or the doer of his anything kind.

  2

  And the skinless spot on his chest, oh they know

  That too, and the bites on his throat, who bit

  Those bites, she knows and she’ll tell you, and the man

  With the skin, with the skinless spot, he has salt for it!

  But salt him down, there’s no harm in it

  If he weeps, get rid of him before he hurries

  To tell you yet again who he is.

  Shut him up if asked to be quiet.

  3

  And yet at the bottom of his heart he has something

  That no friend knows nor even his foe

  Nor his angel nor he himself either and nor when he dies

  And you weep is it that—that you weep (if you do).

  And if you forget him, that’s
nothing bad

  For he deceived you through and through

  Because he never was the one you knew

  Nor the doer only of the things he did.

  4

  Oh the man who like a child with his earthy hands

  Shoves his bread between his teeth and chews it merrily

  The animals blanched when he eyeballed them

  Like a shark he looked, very friendly.

  But be nice to him, be merry with him too!

  Wish him well, give him a hand!

  Oh he isn’t good, be sure of that

  But you don’t know what they might still do to you.

  5

  Oh you who fling him in the dirty-yellow seas

  Or in the black earth dig him six feet down

  In the sack swims more to the fishes than you know

  And more than you buried rots underground.

  But dig him in, dig him in, it’s nothing bad!

  For the grass he never even saw was not

  There for the bulls when he trampled it flat.

  And the doer doesn’t live for what he did.

  Song on Black Saturday in the eleventh hour of the night before Easter

  1

  In spring under green skies in the amorous

  Wild winds, half-beast already I rode

  Down into the black cities with cold

  Maxims wallpapering me inside.

  2

  I filled myself with black beasts of the asphalt

  I filled myself with water and with uproar

  But it left me cold and light, my friend

  I was quite as light and unfilled as before.

  3

  True they broke holes in the walls and into me

  And crawled with curses out again. There was

  Nothing in me but much room and quiet

  You are only paper, they screamed at me with curses.

  4

  Smirking I rolled down between the houses

  Into fresh air. Softly and solemnly

  Now through my walls the wind ran faster.

  And it snowed. It rained in me.

  5

  The meagre snouts of cynical youths have found

  That there is nothing in me. Wild boar though

  Have mated in me. And by the ravens

  Of the milky sky often I’ve been pissed into.

  6

  Weaker than clouds! Lighter than the winds!

  Not visible! Light, half-animal, solemn

  Like one of my poems I flew through skies

  With a stork, but not so fast as him.

  The great chorale of thanksgiving

  1

  Praised be the night and the darkness that hold and enfold you!

  Come in a crowd

  Look up to heaven, behold:

  Already daylight has left you.

  2

  Praised be the grass and the creatures that near you are living and dying!

  See as you do

  So grass and creatures live too

  And with you also are dying.

  3

  Praised be the tree that from dead things uprises rejoicing to heaven!

  Praised be the dead

  Praised be the tree that they fed

  Also, however, praise heaven.

  4

  Praised from the heart be the failing memory of heaven!

  And that it knows

  Neither your name nor your face

  Nobody knows you’re still here.

  5

  Praised be the cold, the darkness, demise and decay!

  Look up and know

  Nothing is asked of you

  And you can die without worry.

  THIRD LESSON: CHRONICLES

  Ballad of the adventurers

  1

  Sun-sick and wholly eaten up by rain

  Stolen laurels in his dishevelled hair

  He has forgotten all his youth but not its dreams

  Long since the roof but the sky above it, never.

  2

  Oh you who were driven out of heaven and hell

  Murderers to whom much harm occurred

  Why did you not stay in your mothers’ wombs

  Where it was quiet and you slept and there you were?

  3

  But he is still seeking through absinthine seas

  Even although his mother will forget him

  Grinning and cursing and also sometimes with tears

  Always a land life would be better in.

  4

  Strolling through hells and lashed through paradises

  Quiet and grinning with a face that is vanishing

  Now and then he dreams of a small meadow

  Blue sky above it and otherwise nothing.

  Ballad on many ships

  1

  Brackish water is brown and the ancient sloops

  Lie around in it bloat and crab-eaten.

  Their ruined masts, that are rotted and slant

  Have rags, once white, now like shitty linen.

  The dropsy works in the spongy bodies

  They no longer know how it feels to sail.

  In wind and moonlight, latrines for the gulls

  On the saltwater tide they loll and reel.

  2

  Who left them? How many? Improper to count

  But with their lapsed licences all have gone

  But still it may happen that a man comes along

  Asking nothing anymore and he boards one.

  He has no hat, he swims in naked

  He no longer has a face. He has too much skin!

  Up on deck he looks back at his trail in the wake

  And the ship herself shudders at his grin.

  3

  For he has not arrived without company

  Nor fallen from the skies, he has sharks in tow!

  Sharks have swum with him to where he is now

  And they dwell with him wherever he might go.

  So he makes his entrance, the last seducer

  This is their meeting in the forenoon light

  And one ship parts unsteadily from other ships

  Sicking up salt in remorse and pissing in fright.

  4

  He cuts up the last of his sails for a jacket

  He draws his noontide fish from the sea

  He lies in the sun and at evening

  In bilge-water he washes his toes, cleanly.

  Now and then looking up to the milky sky

  He notices gulls—which he snares with loops of weed

  And throws to his sharks in the evening.

  Week by week he fobs them off with this feed.

  5

  Oh while he is crossing in the east trade-winds

  He lounges in the ropes, eating eel, eel-like

  And often the sharks hear him singing a song

  And they say: he is singing a song at the stake.

  But then one evening in the month of October

  After a day without song he is seen

  On deck in the stern and they hear him speaking

  And what is he saying? “Tomorrow we go down.”

  6

  And the following night he is lying in the ropes

  Lying and sleeping as his habit has been

  And then he feels it: another ship has come

  Looks down: and she lies there under the moon.

  And he plucks up courage, crosses over with a grin

  He doesn’t look around him, he combs his hair

  For a good appearance. What matter if this sweetheart

  Is a worse sweetheart than the one before?

  7

  Oh for a while he stands at the railing

  And looks and it is given him to view

  The ship sinking that was home and a bed to him

  And among the ropes he sees a shark or two . . .

  8

  And so he lives on, the wind in his eyes,

  Aboard ships that are worse and
worse, he is

  On many ships, half under the water

  And changes his latrine when the moon changes.

  Hatless, naked, with his own pack of sharks

  He knows his world. It is known and seen.

  He has a desire in him: to drown

  And he has a desire: not to go down.

  Death in the woods

  1

  And a man died in the Hathoury Woods

  By the roaring Mississippi.

  Died like a beast with his claws in the roots

  Stared up high into the treetops where over the woods

  For days stormwind had hurtled unceasingly.

  2

  And a few men stood there around him

  Saying, so that he would be quieter:

  Come, we’ll carry you home, fellow wayfarer.

  But with his knees he thrust them from him

  Spat and said: Carry me home where?

  For earth or home, he had neither.

  3

  How many teeth you still got that can chew?

  And by the looks, the rest of you’s that way as well.

  Die a bit quieter, and get on with it, will you!

  Last night we had your nag in a stew

  Why are you so unwilling to go to hell?

  4

  For the woods were loud around him and them

  And they saw: him holding tight to the tree

  And they heard: him screaming at them.

  They stood there smoking in the woods of Hathoury

  Watching him go cold, they were angry

  For he was a man like them.

  5

  You are behaving vilely, like an animal!

 

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