by Tom Kuhn
I tell you we must die! I tell you we must die!
Oh! Moon of Alabama
We now must say goodbye
We’ve lost our good old mama
And must have dollars
Oh! You know why.
Benares song
1
There is no whisky in this town
There is no bar to sit us down
Oh!
Where is the telephone?
Is here no telephone?
Oh, sir, God damn me:
No!
Let’s go to Benares
Where the sun is shining
Let’s go to Benares!
Johnny, let us go.
2
There is no money in this town
There is no girl with whom to shake hands
Oh!
Where is the telephone?
Is here no telephone?
Oh, sir, God damn me:
No!
Let’s go to Benares
Where the sun is shining
Let’s go to Benares!
Johnny, let us go.
3
There is not much fun on this star
There is no door that is ajar
Oh!
Where is the telephone?
Is here no telephone?
Oh, sir, God damn me:
No!
Worst of all, Benares
Is said to have perished in an earthquake!
Oh! our good Benares!
Oh, where shall we go!
Worst of all, Benares
Is said to have been punished in an earthquake!
Oh! our good Benares!
Oh! where shall we go!
FIFTH LESSON: THE BRIEF HOURS OF THE DEAD
Chorale of the man Baal
1
Already while in the mother’s white womb Baal
Grew, the sky was big and quiet and pale
Young and naked and wonderful and weird
Just as Baal loved it then when Baal appeared.
2
And in joy and sorrow the sky stayed where it was
Even when in bliss Baal slept, oblivious:
Sky violet at night and drunk then Baal
Baal early sober, it apricot pale.
3
In the sinners’ shameful mêlée
Baal lay naked, wallowing in easefulness:
Sky alone, but sky come what may
Mightily covered up his nakedness.
4
Every vice has some utility
And, says Baal, the man who does it, so has he.
Know what you want? Then vice is good for you.
And one vice is too many: best choose two.
5
But do not be so delicate or so lazy
For, God knows, enjoying yourself’s not easy.
You need strong members and experience too:
Sometimes a fat belly will hamper you.
6
To the gross vultures Baal looks up
They wait in the starry sky for the corpse of Baal.
He plays dead sometimes. Should a vulture drop
Baal unspeaking eats a vulture for his evening meal.
7
Under sad stars here in this vale of sorrows
Baal grazes the wide fields with a noisy zest
And when he’s cleared them singing off Baal goes
Into the eternal forest for his rest.
8
And when the dark womb pulls Baal down below:
What is the world for Baal then? Baal is full.
Baal has so much sky under his lids that now
He’s dead he has just enough sky still.
9
While in the womb of the dark earth Baal
Rotted the sky was still as big and quiet and pale
Young and naked and weird and wondrous
As Baal once had loved it, when Baal was.
The seduced girls
1
When I am old the Devil will escort me
Down to the shallow ponds that have silted brown
And show me the remains of the water corpses
That I have on my conscience, weighing it down.
2
Under very clouded skies they bore
Wearily, casually away to hell
Like a network of weed and all of them there
Now at my expense they wish to dwell.
3
Their inflamed and rotted bodies formerly
Helped me in the getting of some heat.
They enjoyed the orange daytime with me
And removed themselves from the dreary night.
4
Full and at ease, when I had feasted them
Out of laziness they quitted me with conscience galls
Spoiled the earth for me and made my heavens glum
Left me an inflamed body and no bacchanals.
The drowned girl
1
When she had drowned and begun her drifting down
Out of the streams into the greater rivers
The opal of the sky shone with a wondrous sheen
As though it must appease this corpse of hers.
2
Weed and algae clung fast to her so she
Little by little became much heavier
The swimming fish touched her legs coolly
Plants and beasts on her last voyage further weighted her.
3
And the sky in the evening became as dark as smoke
And at night with the stars it kept the light pending.
But early enough and brightly day broke
So that there should still be for her a morning and an evening.
4
When her pale body had rotted in the water
God’s slow and gradual forgetting of her began:
First her face, then her hands and last of all her hair.
Then she became carrion in rivers with much carrion.
The Liebestod ballad
1
Seven layers eaten into by black rain
A slimy palate that has an appetite for love
With muslin blinds, damp shrouds that the corpses stain:
This is the last room they are tenants of.
2
Leprous the wallpaper, a mildewed white!
And they: hard-welded, rammed in the furniture:
The threadbare heavens cast a pleasant light
On the white couplings of this heavenly pair.
3
Often at the start he sits there in wet linen
And sucks the black virginias she offers
And uses the time to tell her it is certain
(Nodding, with half-closed lids) that he is hers.
4
She feels how hairy this man is and wise!
Through his eyelid slits the day looks like a blot
Soap-green, the clouds veil heaven’s roofing skies
And he suspects: now my shirt has the rot.
5
They pour cognac into their dry carcasses
He feeds her the green light of eventide
Inflamed already are her soft places
Already, slowly, her face begins to fade.
6
She is like a meadow half gone under flood
(Orphaned they are and deaf, the flesh is dull!)
If she would let him sleep he gladly would!
Green heavens that have let their rain fall.
7
On the second day they box the corpses
In stiff cloths, the welded blinds, and fold
Their bodies’ soft places in greasy tatters
For now they realize they were often cold.
8
And oh love went through them as if through water
God with his blades of icy hail sliced!
And deep inside them, much like being quartered
Green bitterness welled up as fat as yeast.
9
For sweat, urine, the stenches in their hair
They long since ceased to sniff the morning air.
And nonetheless years later mornings enter
Grey, bestial, their wall-papered sepulchre.
10
Oh her child-body’s tender mother-of-pearl!
Love and the woodwork struck at it so cruel
It melts like the timbers of smashed cutters swirled
Under the salt-storm tide. The ropes weed-fouled.
11
Grass-green the hand still clutching at her breast!
And in her legs the black stench of the pest!
Down the windowpanes a mild light coursed
And they in their rotten cubbyhole: ensconced.
12
Evening ran like dish-slops down the panes
And the curtains hung tobacco-sick.
Two lovers, steeped very deep in the rains
Of love, drift in green waters, like a wreck
13
That in the tropics, on the seabed bursts
Open among the grey-white fish and the wrack
And by a salt wind over the surface
Below deep underwater begins to rock.
14
On the fourth day, early, neighbours forced
An entry with splintering axe blows
And there heard silence and saw the corpses
(And muttered about a greenish light that glows
15
Perhaps off faces) and the bed still smelled
Of loving, the window burst with frost:
A corpse is a cold thing! Oh there still crawled
A black sliver of cold out of the breast.
Legend of the dead soldier
1
And when in the spring of that fifth year
No sign of peace showed through
The soldier saw what his options were
And died the death of a hero.
2
The war however wasn’t done with yet
And Kaiser Bill was sore.
His soldier had gone and died a death
That he thought premature.
3
Summer spread over the cemetery
And the soldier was sleeping sound
When one night a military
Medical commission came round.
4
The medical commission proceeded
To God’s little acre where
With a spade they had consecrated
They dug up the fallen soldier.
5
And the doctor examined the soldier well
Or what of him was still there.
And the doctor declared him fit to serve
And a mere malingerer.
6
And they hauled the soldier away at once
The night was blue and fair.
You could see, if you had no helmet on
The homeland stars up there.
7
They poured a glass of fiery schnapps
Down into his rotted belly
And hung a nurse on either arm
And his woman, half déshabillée.
8
And because the soldier has a rotting smell
A priest hobbles ahead
And swings a censer so that he’ll
Not stink quite so bad.
9
Ahead the band with ra-ta-ta-ta
Plays a lively march.
And the soldier as he had learned to do
Kicks up his legs from his arse.
10
Arms around him in brotherly style
Two orderlies were there also
Else he’d have fallen flat in the foul
Muck and that wouldn’t do.
11
They painted on his winding sheet
The colours black-white-red
And carried it before him so you saw
The colours and the shite was hid.
12
A gentleman in a frock coat strode
Ahead throwing out his chest
As a German man he didn’t need to be told
To do what a German must.
13
So they marched on with a ra-ta-ta-ta
Down the dark highway
And the soldier staggered along rather
Like a snowflake blowing away.
14
The cats and dogs they scream out loud
The field-rats squeak like the devil:
We do not want to be French!—on account
It would be dishonourable.
15
And when they pass through the villages
All the women were there.
The trees bowed down. Full moonshine.
And everyone shouted, Hurrah!
16
With “Come back soon!” and ra-ta-ta-ta!
With wife and dog and priest!
And in the midst the dead soldier
Like a drunken ape at the feast.
17
And when they pass through the villages
He passed unseen on his way
So many were there in such a press
With ra-ta-ta-ta and Hooray!
18
Around him so many jigged and cheered
Nobody saw him pass by.
He could only be seen from the sky and there’d
Only be stars in the sky.
19
The stars they are not always there
A red morning comes too.
But the soldier goes off to a hero’s death
As he was taught to do.
FINAL CHAPTER
Against seduction
1
Be firm against seduction.
What’s gone won’t come again.
Day stands in the doorway;
The night winds blow already
And all your dawns are done.
2
Stand firm against deception.
The bit of life’s soon gone.
Drink deep of it, for certain
You won’t have drunk enough when
Your lease on it is run.
3
Stand firm against consolation.
Your slice of life is thin.
Leave mouldering to the sainted!
Of all things life’s the greatest:
Live it while you can.
4
Be firm against seduction
To toil and privation.
Your fearfulness is needless;
You die with all the creatures
And nothing follows on.
ADDENDUM: POOR B.B.
Bad teeth
1
Toothless from much gorging on sweet blackberries
Baring my teeth and many rumpuses
Innocent child, chaste as an old man
My life flits by me in this fashion:
2
True, I grind up stones with my jaws
But my gums are as blue as slate. Perforce
Therefore the daily chewing is done with my palate
To get the stuff to pay my belly a visit.
3
Many women hung around with me in rags and tatters
But now that all I have is rotten stumps for gnashers
I have ceased to be, in their opinion
A ripping-red-meat-to-shreds-just-like-that sort of man.
4
Many years I went about with a natural full set
And never a word of thanks from any one of those hyenas did I get.
But now, fading out of their minds, I see
It was only ever for my teeth they were nice to me.
5
Despised and nasty, cooling with the years I
Gave myself up entirely to the schola metaphysicae.
Till then avoided, I have now for many a year
Been head over heels in love with hard liquor.
The sinners in hell
1
For the sinners who have gone to hell
It is hotter than you suppose.
But upon their heads if you weep for them
A tear of kindness flows.
2
But those who burn the worst in hell
No one sheds tears for them
So they must go on their day off
And beg someone for some.
3
But nobody sees them standing there
Through whom the winds blow.
And they cannot be seen anymore
Whom the sun shines through.
4
Along comes Müllereisert
He died in the US
But his bride-to-be hasn’t heard the news
So he is waterless.
5
And along comes Kaspar Neher
Soon as there’s any sun
But, Gods knows why, he has not had
Tears shed for him, not one.
6
And then comes George Pfanzelt
An unlucky fellow: he
Hit upon one idea in life
Which was: it isn’t up to me.
7
And there sweetheart Marie
Rots in the hospital
No tear is ever shed for her
Because she cared too little.
8
And there in the light stands poor Bert Brecht