by Tom Kuhn
To help that sort? Ten million of them! Impossible!
And I asked myself: what manner of cold must it be
That has come over these people!
Who is it belabours them to such a degree
That they are this cold, cold through and through?
So help them, do. And do it soon, won’t you?
Or something will happen to you that you don’t think possible.
Carefully I test . . .
Carefully I test
My plan, it is
Good enough, it is
Unrealizable.
And there came our comrade Liebknecht . . .
And there came our comrade Liebknecht
Walked before the people here
And they murdered comrade Liebknecht
But the day when we’ll be free was drawing near.
And I saw how they lied . . .
And I saw how they lied
And that they were believed
And how they told the truth
And were laughed at.
And when they were not laughed at
They were hunted down.
But, said they, if this world of ours
Is so arranged that in it
Only wickedness and meanness
Are recompensed, then
Surely it must be changed?
And I said: let us think more of this.
Tirelessly the Thinker praises . . .
Tirelessly the Thinker praises
Comrade Lenin because seeing
The possibility of a great new order of things
He went to the market, haggling
And corrupted the corruptible
For the right to speak
And holds up to contempt
Those who arrive with clean hands
That are empty and to the question what
Have they protected answer: only themselves.
What are these people like?
What are these people like?
Their teachers set them on horseback
Slapped the cruppers
Three out of five were seen again
And these were taught to walk in a mincing fashion
To shoot at playing cards and to empty
Countless barrels of drink. Into their heads
Came swear words and the times table up to ten. Thus prepared
They were let loose on cattle and women and placed under the rule of money.
The weather on the steppes and the cunning of the merchants
Saw to everything else.
What happened to these people?
Their teachers sat them down before a book
That dealt with a book and that was
Dealt with by other books. They were taught
To read with their fingers between the pages, often to leaf back
To pay their debts as an example to those in hock to the usurers
To shake their heads, to lament whilst adding up
To buy only from bankrupts, to hate
And to support their own kind
To eat only certain foods and
To invent systems in which a piece of paper
Means fifty houses.
What are tanks?
What are tanks?
The prison cells
Full of prisoners
Are put on wheels
And called tanks
And sent against the enemy.
On the poor man’s early labour . . .
On the poor man’s early labour
Oh the rich lie long in bed.
Must the working poor go hungry
While the shirking rich get fed?
Song of the soldier’s widow
When I swore my man fidelity
At that time and in that place
I never thought I’d lose sight of him
And could forget his face.
And when I bore him two children
It never entered my head
That man of mine would leave me
And go and fight for the Kaiser instead.
When I said “I do” and signed the book
That didn’t mean that he
Would go off and fight the Kaiser’s foe
And I would go hungry.
The ones who start a war like that
They want their heads thumping hard
So that they’ll hold in future
People in higher regard.
Ballad for the finale
I had a wife, she was dear to me
Loveliest woman you ever saw
And along came the Field Marshal
And said: Quick march! To war!
And while I defended something
My wife went with someone else
I took it bad, it hurt my pride
That she could play me false.
I hit my wife in the kisser
I’m a rough man, that’s what I do.
But when I catch sight of a field marshal
I lick his arse even now.
If I weren’t such a half-witted creature
I’d sit me down and think
Perhaps that things have gone too far
And perhaps even I’ll make a stink.
And I’d say this to the Field Marshal:
You gave me a gun and now
I’m thinking that I might use it—
Stand over there, will you.
Crossing the frontier of the Soviet Union . . .
Crossing the frontier of the Soviet Union
The motherland of reason and of the workers
Above the tracks we saw a sign which read:
Workers, you are welcome here!
But returning into the land of crime and disorder
Our homeland
We saw a sign for the trains heading west
Which read:
The Revolution
Breaks through every frontier.
As the Fascists grew ever stronger in Germany . . .
As the Fascists grew ever stronger in Germany
And even workers, in ever greater numbers, joined them
We said to ourselves: our fight was not the right one.
Small groups of Nazis in their new uniforms
Went insolently through red Berlin and murdered
Our comrades.
But among those who fell were Reichsbanner people as well as our own.
Then we said to our comrades in the SPD:
Must we put up with them murdering our comrades?
Fight alongside us in the anti-fascist alliance!
And they answered us:
Perhaps we would fight alongside you but our leaders
Warn us not to oppose White terror with Red.
Day after day, we said, our newspaper has written against individual acts of terror
But also day after day it has written: we shall prevail
Only if we make a united Red Front.
Comrades, acknowledge now that the “lesser evil”
With which for years you have been kept out of any sort of struggle
Will very soon come to mean tolerance of the Nazis.
But in the factories and wherever the unemployed sign on
In the proletariat we saw the will to fight.
Also in the east of Berlin Social Democrats
Greeted us with “Rot Front!” and even wore the badge
Of “Action against Fascism”. On discussion evenings
The pubs were crammed full.
And at once the Nazis no longer dared
To walk down our streets alone
For at least the streets are ours
Though they steal our houses.
The Führer tells us . . .
1
The Führer tells us put your best foot forward
We won’t get where we’re going unless we do.
Left right, don’t give up hope, and that’s an order
And Industry will beat the drum for you.
It’s a long way, a thousand-year way
To the Third Reich, but cheer up, chum!
Climb a tall tree, the German oak tree
And watch for it till kingdom come.
2
The Führer says: I am the rock to build on
And builds himself a brown house first and fast.
This house, it has much marble and much gold in
And none of us can ask him what it cost.
Now it’s a posh way, the thousand-year way
To the Third Reich, we’re not so glum!
From a tall tree, the German oak tree
We’ll watch for it till kingdom come.
3
The Führer tells us he will feed the hungry
We’ll all feel better for a bite to eat.
He sits him down in the Kaiserhof because he
Will get four courses there and leave replete.
It’s a long way, a thousand-year way
To the Third Reich, when you’ve nothing in your tum.
But climb a tall tree, the German oak tree
And watch for it till kingdom come.
4
The Führer says: no one in rags and tatters!
And he’s been telling Industry the score:
That we must have new uniforms—it matters!—
Or Captain Röhm won’t love us anymore
It’s a long way, a thousand-year way
To the Third Reich, but nicer two by two.
The German oak tree is a tall tree
And under it the comrades rendezvous.
5
The Führer says here comes the eleventh winter
No slacking now, quick march! And off he goes
And leads the way in his new eight-cylinder.
Quick march! Don’t let the frostbite get your toes.
It’s still a long way, a thousand-year way
To the Third Reich, but cheer up, chum!
Climb a tall tree, the German oak tree
And watch for it till kingdom come.
6
The Führer says his age is in his favour
And he will live and Hindenburg will die
And then it will be his turn, have no fear
He’s not in any hurry and that’s why
It’s a long way, a thousand-year way
To the Third Reich, but cheer up, chum!
Climb a tall tree, the German oak tree
And watch for it till kingdom come.
Pure Aryan Hitler
Crawl away and die
Industry licks your
Arse: and why?
The Internationale
Comrades report:
In the Pamir foothills
We met a woman, director of a silk farm
Who has convulsions if she hears
The Internationale. She told us
During the Civil War her husband
Was leader of a group of partisans. Badly wounded
Lying at home, he was betrayed. Arresting him
The White Army guards shouted: you won’t be singing
Your Internationale anymore! And before his eyes
They did the woman violence on the bed.
Then the man began to sing.
And he sang the Internationale
Even after they had shot his youngest child
And he stopped singing
When they shot his son
And he himself stopped living. Since that day
The woman says, she has convulsions
If ever she hears the Internationale anywhere.
And, so she told us, it was hard
To find a workplace in the Soviet Republics
Where it wasn’t sung
Because from Moscow to the Pamir Mountains
Nowadays you can’t escape
The Internationale.
But it rings out a little less often
In the Pamirs.
And we spoke further about her work.
She told us her district
Had at present only half-fulfilled the Five-Year Plan.
But already the place was utterly transformed
Becoming unrecognizable and at the same time more their own
A host of new people
With new work making a new stability
And next year
Very likely the plan will be exceeded
And if that happens
A factory will be built: if it is built
She says, on that day
I shall sing the Internationale.
Don’t waste a thought on . . .
1
Don’t waste a thought on
Things that cannot be altered.
Don’t lift a finger
For what cannot be improved.
For what can’t be saved
Let fall not a tear. But
Deal out what there is to the hungry
Seize what is possible and stamp
Stamp on the selfish wretch who hinders you when
You are hauling your brother out of the shaft with the ropes that are there in abundance.
Don’t waste a thought on things that cannot be altered. But
Haul the whole of suffering humanity up out of the shaft
With the ropes that are there in abundance.
2
What a triumph useful things are!
Even the unattached mountaineer who never promised anything to anyone but himself
When he has climbed the peak and has triumphed he rejoices
Because his strength was useful to him, here and so elsewhere too
Would be useful and at once
They come after him lugging
Their instruments and their measures up the now climbable peak, those who gauge
The weather for the farmers and the atmosphere for the airmen.
3
The approval and triumph we feel as we view
The images of the mutiny on the battleship Potemkin
At that moment when the sailors fling their tormentors into the sea
Is the same approval and triumph we feel as we view
The images reporting the flight over the South Pole
I have had the experience
That even the exploiters, present beside me, were moved to approval
Seeing the revolutionary sailors’ deed: thus
The scum itself felt the irresistibly seductive
Power of the possible and the rigorous delights of logic.
Just as good engineers when they with much labour
Have built and continually improved an automobile
Wish in the end to run it flat out, to its maximum speed and so
Get out of it what it has in it, and just as the farmer wishes
To plough his field with a plough that has been improved and the builders of bridges
Wish to unleash the colossal dredgers on the stony bed of the river
So we likewise wish to run flat out and complete the work of improving
This planet for the whole of living humanity.
Of all works . . .
Of all works the dearest
To me are the used.
Copper vessels with dents and flattened rims
Knives and forks whose wooden handles
Many hands have abraded: such forms
Seemed to me the noblest. Likewise the flagstones around old houses
Trodden by many feet, worn down
And tufts of grass growing between them, these
Are happy works.
Gone into use by the many
Often altered, they improve their shapes and forms, becoming tasteful
By being often tasted.
Even the fragments of statues
With their smashed-off hands are dear to me. They also
Were alive for me. Though let fall, once they were carried.
Though overrun, they never stood too tall.
Half-ruinous buildings
Have again the appearance of those not yet completed
Planned large: their beautiful proportions
Can already be sensed; but they still need
Our understanding. On the other hand
They have already served, indeed are already superseded. All this
Gladdens me.
Zehr and Patschek
A moral tale
Zehr and Patschek were a pair of captains
But not on any ship or any sea
Patschek commanded a fleet of coal barges
Zehr a fertilizer factory.
Fertilizer had a lovely daughter
Coal, he was the father of a son.
These children were not getting any younger
And the parents knew what needed to be done.
So it was then that a great love blossomed
At the altar it was signed and sealed.
Two hearts came together in one passion
Funds were also there to have and hold.
And their love was quite considerable
But when in due course it had had its day
All saw clearly how the sexual
Side of things but not the financial lay.
When a couple suffer such adversity
Often their best defence will be attack:
Patschek junior demanded the dowry
And Herr Zehr: he asked for it back.
“We had no sight of any dowry”
Swore Herr Patschek. And Herr Zehr, he swore:
“Alas, I gave it—more fool me—
And what I gave, you will restore.”
And Herr Patschek? “Your receipt!” he bawled.
“A copy, yes, I might have,” said Herr Zehr.
But when the bailiff called