The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht
Page 28
To wash under my dirty spout.
One let his lads ride on me
Very young, comrades already.
True, before long they were gone
Gone forever, but not forgotten
Because I knew they felt for me
We know we belong together
Each my comrade, each my brother
In the proletariat
In the proletariat
Them and me!
The first I had was a man from Hamm
He copped it on the Chemin des Dames.
My second swallowed too much coal dust
Blacked his lungs and he was lost.
Soot in his eyes so he couldn’t see
I squashed my third’s foot under me.
My fourth one morning didn’t turn in
It was a machine gun did for him.
True, before long you’ll be gone
Gone forever, but not forgotten.
Because I know you felt for me.
We knew we belonged together
Each my comrade, each my brother
In the proletariat
In the proletariat
You and me!
Song of the machines
1
Hallo, we want to speak to America
Speak across the Atlantic Ocean to the big cities
Of America, hallo
We wondered what language
We should speak in
To be understood
But now we have gathered together our singers
Who are understood here and in America
And all over the world
Hallo, listen to what our black stars are singing
Hallo, take notice of who is singing for us . . .
This isn’t the wind in the plane tree, friend
This isn’t a song to the lonely star
It is the wild din of our daily labour
We curse it and we hold it dear
This wild din is the voice of our cities
And it pleases us to sing this song
For this is the language we all understand
And soon it will be the world’s mother tongue
2
Hallo, these are our black stars
They don’t sing sweet but they sing while they work
While they’re making light for you, they sing
While they’re making newspapers, clothes and water pipes
Trains and lamps, stoves and records
They sing
Hallo, sing us another song, will you, while you’re here
A little song across the Atlantic Ocean
In your voices that everyone understands
This isn’t the wind in the plane tree, friend
This isn’t a song to the lonely star
It is the wild din of our daily labour
We curse it and we hold it dear
This wild din is the voice of our cities
And it pleases us to sing this song
For this is the language we all understand
And soon it will be the world’s mother-tongue
Children’s song
1
Bite, grabber, bite
Coal has its price all right
The coal is commandeered already
The millionaire wants yet more money
We sweat here day and night
Bite, grabber, bite
2
Our pain, his gain, you bet
The coal sups our sweat
If I spend too long having a crap
At once the price of coal goes up
Young and old, we get
Water for our sweat.
Roll of honour for twelve world champions
This is the history of the middleweight world champions
Their fights and careers
From the year 1891
Till now:
I begin the series in the year 1891
The age of brutal fighting
When the matches still lasted 56 and 70 rounds
And only ended in a knock-out
With Bob Fitzsimmons, the father of boxing technique
World champion in the middleweight
And in the heavyweight (by his victory 17 March 1897
Over Jim Corbett)
34 years of his life in the ring, only six times beaten
So feared that for the whole of 1898
He had no opponent. Not till 1914
At the age of 51 did he fight
His last two fights.
A man without age.—
In 1905 Bob Fitzsimmons lost his title to
Jack O’Brien, known as Philadelphia Jack.
Jack O’Brien began his boxing career
At the age of 18
He fought more than 200 fights.
Never
Did Philadelphia Jack
Ask about the purse
His standpoint was
You learn by fighting
And he won so long as he learned.
Jack O’Brien’s successor was
Stanley Ketchel
Made famous by four sluggings
Against Billy Papke
And as the roughest fighter of all times
Shot in the back at the age of 23
On a smiling autumn day
Sitting outside his ranch
Unbeaten.
I continue my series with
Billy Papke
The first genius of in-fighting
In his day for the first time was heard
The name: human fighting machine.
In 1913 in Paris
He was beaten
By one greater in the art of in-fighting:
Frank Klaus.
Frank Klaus, his successor, met
The most famous middleweights of his time
Jimmy Gardener, Billy Berger
Willie Lewis and Jack Dillon
And Georges Carpentier was as weak as a child against him.
He was beaten by George Chip
The unknown man from Oklahoma
Who otherwise did no deeds of importance
And lost to
Al McCoy, the worst of all middleweight champions
Only good at taking punishment
Who was shorn of his title by
Mike O’Dowd
The man with the iron chin
Beaten by
Johnny Wilson
Who knocked out 48 men
And was knocked out himself
By
Harry Greb, the human windmill
Of all boxers the one you could always count on
Who never refused a fight
And fought every one to a finish
And when he had lost said:
I have lost.
Sparring with Tiger Jack Dempsey
The Man Killer, the Manassa Mauler
Harry Greb drove him so mad
He flung his gloves away
The “phantom who couldn’t stand still”
Beaten on points in 1926 by
Tiger Flowers, negro and preacher
Who was never knocked out.
Today the middleweight world champion
Successor to the boxing preacher is
Mickey Walker
Who 30 June 1927 in London in 30 minutes
Thumped the bravest boxer in Europe
The Scot Tommy Milligan
To pieces.
Bob Fitzsimmons
Jack O’Brien
Stanley Ketchel
Billy Papke
Frank Klaus
George Chip
Al McCoy
Mike O’Dowd
Johnny Wilson
Harry Greb
Tiger Flowers
Mickey Walker—
These are the names of twelve men
Who in their field were the best in their day
As was settled by hard fighting
Observing the rules of the game
Before the eyes of the world.
The thrift of the rich
Once hereabouts was a poor man.
He came to the big houses
And played the piano accordion
Under their balconies
And waited in vain for a rain of pennies.
Paler every day his face.
He was not nice to listen to.
But he never hated the human race
Despite what he went through
Till he was the colour of dough.
For now all his drink was the rain that fell
And all his meat was the sun.
(Diogenes in the barrel
Was a Croesus in comparison)
But he played the sweetest melodies still.
When he finally croaked (of hunger)
They opened the accordion
And stretched it wider and longer
And laid the old man in
Which saved them the cost of a coffin.
Winter
Spring, summer and autumn, as I told you, are nothing to the cities, but winter is noticeable.
1
For winter
By poets long called “the soft, the quiet season”
Has again become terrible
As in the beginning
In theperiod
Was not even the summer unfriendly?
2
Suddenly even the indifferent heavens
Join in the destruction
And arrive with the cold
3
The masses after their tribulation
Returning find their cave dwellings dark
4
And from now on
Hunger and cold divide up between them
The stock of the poor.
5
As though human beings themselves did not suffice
To exterminate their race.
Fatzer chorus 1
Also we saw driving through
Our city too fast and so
Scarcely visible
With a blood-smeared face on urgent business
Justice
All too well protected by people
With iron hats.
Hearing a voice between
Field gun and wolf
We enquired and learned: that is
The voice of justice.
Fatzer chorus 7
1
Injustice is human
But more humane
The struggle against injustice!
But even in this
Halt at the human being, leave him
Not used up, teach him,
Killed, nothing more.
Knife, don’t scrape off
The script with the dirt
You’ll have left
Only an empty sheet
Once covered with scars.
2
Such a clean sheet
Covered with scars let us finally
Insert into the record
Of humankind.
No sooner had he finished speaking . . .
No sooner had he finished speaking
He felt by a sudden cold
Eleven shadows above him:
Towards him in his exhaustion
Came in a monstrous procession
Eleven years of extreme misfortune
Which would end
Only with his utter destruction
Singing Steyr motor cars
We hail
From a munitions factory
Our little brother is
The Mannlicher carbine.
But our mother
Is an ore mine in Steyr.
We have:
Six cylinders and thirty horsepower.
We weigh:
Twenty-two hundredweight.
Our wheelbase measures
Three metres.
Each rear wheel moves separately: we have
A pivot axle.
We stick to the bends like glue strip.
Our engine is:
Thinking metal.
Man, just drive us!!
We will carry you with so little upset
That you’ll think you’re floating
In water.
We will drive you so gently along
That you’ll think you’d have to
Press us to the ground with your thumb, and
So quietly will we carry you
That you’ll think you’re driving
Your motor’s shadow.
The tenth sonnet
The world loves me or not, it is all one.
Since I’ve lived here some talk has come my way
And I keep every cowardly option open.
The lack of greatness irks me though, I must say.
Were there a table and great men at a meal
I’d sit down gladly as the lowest of the low
And should there be a fish I’d eat the fish’s tail
And if they didn’t want my company I’d go.
Oh for a book that told of such a table!
And were there justice though none given me
I should rejoice, even were I culpable.
Is all this there and only I can’t see?
I do not like to admit this: I of all people
Despise the sort whose lives are miserable.
However, if you want my opinion, gentlemen . . .
I know all about all that
It’s a mockery, gentlemen
Virtue, love and good health
And the stupidest: rewards in heaven
Pie in the sky, jam tomorrow
And the good it does now? Not a lot.
The question is: who eats who?
Answer that, and you know what’s what
A man needs an appetite
And pronto something to eat
The leaves of every tree . . .
The leaves of every tree
Door, wall and windowpane
We take possession of
Now, as she dies, for her.
Work and a place to live
The world’s food and drink
We take possession of.
Rosa
The bushes, blossoming yellow, stood
Still full of hope, for sure
And every flower held its head
High, one week more.
Epitaph 1919
So now Red Rosa has also passed away.
Where she lies none can say.
She told the truth to the poor, that’s why
The rich decided she had to die.
The rag-and-bone man
I am glad, God summoned Death
And appointed Death to look after all who are weary of life.
When all the wheels of a clock are worn and slow and its trains all loose
And the clock goes on ticking and telling the time wrong from hour to hour
And everyone in the house makes fun of it, what a clapped-out clock it is
Then how glad the clock is when the big rag-and-bone man pushes his cart
Up to the house and embraces the clock and says:
I like hearing the tally of my rights . . .
I like hearing the tally of my rights
It is my right
To have enough to eat
(It is not my right to have my food taken off me)
One of my rights
Is to sleep with a roof over my head
But are there as many roofs
As there are rights?
It is my right
To get justice
To be invited
And not turn up
To wear a good suit
To wear a bad one
To borrow money
To get my arse kicked
To tell them the truth
To hear the truth
In addition and above all
I surely have the right to live
Don’t I?
Even as a child they said it was disgraceful .
. .
Even as a boy they said it was disgraceful
That a woman’s bum uplifted me
Say what they like: I’m human, I am natural
Women tempt me as they always have. Praise be!
And even if they stirred my better urges
And the soul in me struggled towards the light
And even if my prick stayed in my trousers
My face is still a very unchaste sight.
Men are only stopgaps but a woman
Takes what falls into her lap, so it is said
But cupping up a bosom’s much more fun than
Being well respected when you’re dead
Inscription on an uncollected tombstone
Traveller, should you pass by
Know this:
I was happy
My undertakings were fruitful
My friends were loyal
My thoughts agreeable
What I did, I did for a reason
At the end I did not recant
Never for anything trivial
Did I alter my opinion.
Since I am not yet dead
All I dare say is this:
My life was hard, but
I am not complaining
Also I have things to show for my life
Don’t worry about me, I myself
Despise unhappy people
But even as I wrote
What you are reading here
By then nothing could touch me.