The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht
Page 37
Nor a splendid reorganization of hunger
Nor the strict control of the exploited
But rather: the total satisfaction of the needs of all
According to reasonable principles.
Not from the vigour of race
Not from the inspiration of some Führer
Not from especial guile nor superhuman miracle
But from a simple plan
Workable by any people of whatever race
Founded on straightforward deliberations that anyone can perform
So long as they are neither exploiter nor oppressor
We await everything.
Go!
Go!
Don’t look around. Your comrade
Has been assaulted. You
Must not help him. Even a stranger
Will help someone who has collapsed. You
His friend
May not help him.
Go your way!
Always one step at a time . . .
“Always one step at a time”
It has always been hot underfoot!
“Why should we get out now?
They have nothing against us yet.”
“But the rain’s beating down outside!”
“But the roof is in flames overhead!”
“Better than burning to death
Let’s just get our hair wet!”
In the dark time . . .
In the dark time
Of the bloodiest oppression
The truth walks abroad
In shoes full of holes
She walks amongst the persecuted.
The truncheon says: they’re all well fed
The pistol swears: they’re none of them cold
But driven away seven times
The hunted returns to his kind
And spreads the truth.
Driven away off the surface
They consult without cease
Underground.
Granted
The cadres are getting smaller. The messengers fall by the wayside
The messages are not collected.
The place for the meeting is lost and forgotten.
Torture does not open mouths
But murder does shut them.
I have no need of a gravestone . . .
I have no need of a gravestone, but
If you should need one for me
I would want it to read:
He made suggestions. We
Took them on.
Such an inscription would
Honour us all.
On the meaning of the ten-line poem in issue 888 of The Torch (October 1933)
When the Third Reich began
The well-versed orator issued just a short message.
In a ten-line poem
He raised his voice, solely in order to lament
That it was insufficient.
When the atrocities attain a certain pitch
We are lost for examples.
The atrocities multiply
And the protests peter out.
Crimes walk the streets insolently
And beggar description.
Of those who are throttled
Words stick in the throat.
Silence spreads out, and from afar
It looks like assent.
The triumph of violence
Appears complete.
Now only the beaten bodies
Bear witness that criminals once lived here.
Only the silence hanging over devastated homes
Points its finger at the crime.
So is the struggle over?
Can the misdeeds be forgotten?
Can the murdered be buried and the witnesses gagged?
Can injustice triumph although it is injustice?
The misdeeds can indeed be forgotten.
The murdered can be buried and the witnesses can be gagged.
Injustice can triumph although it is injustice.
Oppression sits down at table and reaches out for its dinner
With bloodied hands.
But those who bring on the food
Cannot forget the weight of the bread; their hunger gnaws
Even if the word hunger is forbidden.
Those who spoke of hunger, now lie murdered.
Those who cried out against oppression, lie gagged.
But those who pay the bills don’t forget the extortion.
The oppressed don’t forget the boot at their necks.
Before violence has reached its utmost intensity
Resistance begins once again.
When the orator offered his regrets
That his voice was failing
His silence stepped out before the judge’s bench
Tore the cloth from its visage and revealed
Itself as witness.
On the swift fall from grace of the worthy know-nothing
When we had excused the well-versed orator for his silence
There passed, between the writing down of that praise and its arrival
But a short time. And in that time, he spoke.
But: he bore witness against those whose mouths had been gagged
And pronounced sentence on those who had been done to death.
He vaunted the murderers. He blamed the murdered.
He counted up the crusts that the hungry had scavenged.
To the shivering he related tales of the arctic.
To those who had been beaten with rods by the clerics
He held out the threat of the housepainter’s steel clubs.
Thus he showed us
How little goodness helps if it does not know its way
And how little the desire to tell the truth can achieve
In one who does not know that truth.
So he who sallied out against oppression, himself well fed
When it comes to the battle, there he stands
On the side of the oppressors.
How uncertain is the help of those who know nothing!
Appearances deceive them. Entrusted to chance
Their goodwill stands on faltering legs.
What a time, we said, shuddering
When the good-willed but unknowing
Cannot wait with his ill deed even that short time
Until the praise of his good deeds reaches him!
So acclaim, seeking the pure at heart
Can find no one with their heads above the mire
When, gasping, it finally makes its entrance.
War song
And they marched away to war
And they needed bullets and guns
And there were all sorts of nice people
Who gave them the bullets and guns.
“No war without ammunition!”
“We’ll give you the guns, my son
You’re going to war for us
We’ll make you the ammunition.”
And they made a pile of munitions
And then they were short of a war
And there were all sorts of nice people
Saw to it they’d have another war.
“To war, to war, my son
In your country’s hour of need
To war for your mothers and sisters
For Kaiser, King and Creed.”
Loss of a valuable person
You have lost a valuable person.
That he has gone from you is no proof
That he is not valuable. Admit:
You have lost a valuable person.
You have lost a valuable person.
He went from you because you are serving a cause that is good
And he went to a worthless one. Admit nevertheless:
You have lost a valuable person.
You have gone quiet, comrade . . .
You have gone quiet, comrade
When we make our demands
Your name is missing. It is said
You are tired of the violence or
T
hat you despair of us. What
Does all this mean?
You are wearing a new suit
You are moving into new accommodation
Where is the suit from?
Who is paying for your accommodation?
Who, comrade, is paying for your silence and who
For your next speech?
Your speeches carry away the audience as they always did
Your demands are relentless
You have taken on new responsibilities but
You are wearing a new suit and living in new accommodation.
They opened the door in the night . . .
They opened the door in the night
For a short while they stood by their families
In that miserable hole
Then they went silently off
Into the nothingness
Unrecognized.
Or they were taken by the walls of the factories
On which their RED FRONT was not dry, not finished
Died with their skulls kicked in, still holding
The paintbrush in their hands
Not finished by any means.
Others, the truth was ripped from their hands
Printed on miserable scraps of paper
What was mountain about you . . .
What was mountain about you
They have razed
And your valleys
They have filled in
Through you now there leads
An easy path.
Shopping
I am an old woman.
When Germany reawakened
The benefits were cut. My children
Gave me small change from time to time. But
I could hardly afford anything. At first
I simply went less often to the shops, where before I’d been shopping daily.
But one day I thought it over, and then
Once again I went every day to the baker, to the greengrocer
Just an old woman shopping.
Carefully I made my choices from amongst the provisions
Took no more than before, but no less either
I set the rolls down by the loaf, and the leeks by the cabbage, and only
When they’d totted it up, did I sigh
Poke around with stiff fingers in my leather purse
And confess, with a shake of the head, that I didn’t have enough
To pay even for those few things, and I left the shop
Still shaking my head, in view of all the customers.
I said to myself
If all of us who have nothing
Stop coming, where there’s food to be had
People might think we don’t need anything
But if we come and can’t buy anything
Then they’ll know.
Why should we be ashamed of you . . .
Why should we be ashamed of you, black brother asphalt?
You who take care that the undivided masses
Walk more easily and that no one
Sinks into the mud? We should rather lend a hand
That these ceaselessly marching crowds
Get to work that is lighter and to lodgings that are dry!
Why these insults?
Why do they scorn him
Who already lies beneath their boots?
Poem in thanks to Mari Hold, on 5 October 1934
Coming up from the south, from my father’s house
Beneath the chestnut trees in Bleichstrasse
Where your sister had been before, you came to join me
In the big city, and looked after me
How many years?
How quickly the time has passed!
You took care of the little flat.
Speaking the language of my youth, Bavarian
You kept order, resolutely, but
Unobtrusively. Whenever
I returned home at night, the workroom was clean
As if newly furnished, the devastation cleared! The smoke
Had dispersed. The papers
Lay in neat piles (the order undisturbed).
Not once
In all those years did a sheet go missing. Not a single cup
Was still unwashed by evening. In the cupboard
Not a single piece of dirty laundry.
The day began
When you brought the papers, early
To the little bedroom, pulling up the blind:
The stove was lit already; the tea already brewed
When I entered the workroom
And the porridge, which only you could make.
You’re a good-looking girl and
I liked to see you going to and fro, and all
My guests praised you and asked: Who is that
Good-looking girl? And I said: She is
From Bavaria, the land I also come from.
Always friendly
You did what was to be done
Withholding your own opinion, but
Not without opinion: a glance sufficed to register
What you could not condone. And yet, even to the unwelcome
Amongst my guests you offered tea and wholesome sandwiches.
And wore a friendly smile
Even for old Dudow.
How much patience you had! Only when the poet’s beard
Resembled the impenitent’s did you
Tactfully bring shaving water.
And you looked after the other children too. Every afternoon
You walked over to the other flat, tirelessly
To Steff who kept inventing new tortures and to
Prattling Barbara. Coming from Augsburg
You observed once, shuddering, that you hated children, but
When the barbarian came, she had your eyes, and soon
She had two mothers.
When for the last time we took the car
(The blue one with the gently singing motor
That the housepainter stole from us: Let it
Not be forgotten!) and drove out of Berlin
We said: here
We shall not return again so soon. Already
The shadows fell on the city of the crimes
That would lay waste to it.
Then when, far from the city that makes us smart, we bought a house
In a park, with a fishpond
(The housepainter drove us out there too: Let it
Not be forgotten!) you went away for a while, but
When we crossed over the border into the unknown, you followed, and
Helped us to furnish the second house, the low house with
The oar on the thatch.
There
You got to know the man, who took you to be his. Now
You can move into your own house.
THOSE WHO ARE USEFUL ARE ALWAYS IN DANGER
TOO MANY NEED THEM.
PRAISE BE TO THOSE WHO ESCAPE THE DANGER
AND YET REMAIN USEFUL.
The song of the Saar
13 January
From the Memel to the Maas
Runs a barbed-wire fence.
Behind it proletarians
Bleed in our defence.
Hold the Saar, comrades
Comrades, hold the Saar.
Then come 13 January
We’ll know where we are.
Bavaria and Saxony
Are beset by robbers.
And Württemberg and Baden
Suffer grievous troubles.
Hold the Saar, comrades
Comrades, hold the Saar.
Then come 13 January
We’ll know where we are.
In Prussia there’s General Göring
And Thyssen rampages on the Rhine.
In Hesse and in Thüringen
They’re ruled by Party swine.
Hold the Saar, comrades
Comrades, hold the Saar.
Then come 13 January
We’ll know where we are.
And stripped our Germany bare
Reach out their grubby hand
For that little jewel, the Saar.
Hold the Saar, comrades
Comrades, hold the Saar.
Then come 13 January
We’ll know where we are.
They’ll meet their match on the Saar
They’ll come to a sticky end
For the Germany we desire
Is a very different land.
Hold the Saar, comrades
Comrades, hold the Saar.
Then come 13 January
We’ll know where we are.
The Caledonian Market
There for eternity sat the terrible god, with out-turned soles
One day, however, his nose was broken, a toe fell off, and the arm so unforgiving
But the bronze body was far too heavy, so just the hand was stolen
And made its way to the Caledonian Market, down through the hands of the living.
The Caledonian Market
Under Troy there lie full seven cities
And the whole lot were dug up, or so I hear.
Are there seven cities under London?
Is this detritus from the bottommost come to market here?
Next to the glistening fishes, there at the neighbouring stall
Under the socks there, look there lurks a hat.
A new one will cost you seven shillings or more
This costs just two, and has only the one small hole at that.