The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht

by Tom Kuhn

  Nobody wants goodness, they want cash,

  And their hearts are hard and mean and tight.

  But suppose a good man has some money,

  Just enough, he thinks, to set things right,

  Then the villain who thinks evil’s fun, he’d

  Better watch out: the fire’s alight!

  Humankind is not so bad as p’raps you thought,

  There was little cause to be downcast, sir.

  Things are looking up; just like before.

  Hearts are beating strong again and faster.

  You can tell the servant from his master.

  And the law is once again the law.

  The madam’s song

  Oh, you know how people say a red moon

  Shining on the water makes the girls go weak

  And you’ve heard how all the ladies swoon

  For a handsome bloke. Believe me, it’s a joke!

  I’ve seen girls with hearts on fire

  But their thoughts were on—something higher.

  Though it may not seem polite:

  Decent girls will quickly tire

  Of a gentleman who’s tight,

  Yet they can be quite adoring

  If you learn to treat them right.

  Money makes a girl feel sexy—

  It’s as true as it is trite.

  So tell me, what’s the use of a red moon

  Shining on the water, if you’re stony broke?

  Handsome men don’t have a silver lining:

  When they’re out of cash, believe me it’s no joke.

  I’ve seen girls with hearts on fire

  But their thoughts were on—something higher.

  Though it may not seem polite:

  Don’t imagine you’ll inspire

  All that passion and delight

  Till the girl has had her breakfast.

  No my friend, that’s just not right.

  Food is good, and money’s sexy—

  It’s as true as it is trite.

  The landowners’ roundelay

  Perhaps the year will pass without ado now?

  Perhaps the fearful shadows now will scatter

  And all those rumours that the people chatter

  To frighten us will turn out quite untrue now.

  Perhaps in time the people will forget us,

  As we’d forget this last year’s strife and dread,

  And we’ll sit down to many happy suppers.

  Perhaps we’ll even die in peace in bed?

  Perhaps their oaths will turn to blessings by and by?

  Perhaps this night will flood the world in light?

  Perhaps this moon won’t wane, but shine on bright?

  Perhaps the rain will fall back to the sky!

  Uncollected Poems

  1934–1936

  The chalk cross

  I am a maid in service. I had a thing

  With a man who was in the SA.

  One day before he went off

  He showed me, laughing, how they do it

  To catch the troublemakers.

  With a piece of chalk from his jacket pocket

  He made a small cross on the palm of his hand.

  He told me, prepared like that he goes out

  In civvies to the labour exchange

  Where the unemployed stand griping

  And he gripes too and, so doing, slaps

  As a sign of approval and fellow feeling

  A griper on the shoulder, upon which the marked man

  A white cross on his back, is intercepted by the SA.

  We laughed about that.

  I went out with him for three months, then I noticed

  He’d stolen money out of my savings book.

  He’d said he wanted to look after it for me (for the times are uncertain).

  When I confronted him he swore he had

  Honest intentions. And, to placate me, he

  Laid his hand on my shoulder.

  I turned away in fear. Back home

  I looked in the mirror, whether there was not, on my back

  A white cross.

  The doctor

  This sick man

  Has been laid by my enemies on my examination table.

  He is bleeding from seventeen wounds and speaks in a fever.

  How do I dare to bandage him?

  He has surely been beaten

  I mustn’t have anything to do with him.

  Doomed to die

  There comes one, keep out of his way

  He’s under suspicion

  That he saw them committing a crime.

  He came round the corner and saw them

  At their butchery. Now

  He is lost.

  No one, of course, will give him a hearing

  That’s much too dangerous. He himself

  Of course, speaks to no one. But his children at lunch

  Listen to each and every word and

  Report it to the authorities.

  He is only still free

  Because they’re not yet agreed about the spoils

  And they need him, to threaten each other.

  The neighbour

  I am the neighbour. I informed against him.

  We don’t want rabble-rousers

  In our building.

  When we hung out the swastika flag

  He didn’t want to.

  When we challenged him

  He asked us if we had in our room

  Where we live with our four children

  So much space we could fit a flagpole.

  When we said that we believed in the future once more

  He laughed.

  That they beat him up on the stairs

  We didn’t like that. They tore his jacket.

  That wasn’t necessary. None of us

  Has that many jackets.

  But at least he’s gone now, and there’s quiet in the house.

  We have enough troubles as it is, we need

  Some peace and quiet.

  We’ve noticed, some people

  Look away when they meet us. But

  The people who took him away say

  We did just the right thing.

  Who will teach the teacher?

  I am a teacher

  But who will teach me?

  How can I know what they want to have taught?

  I am a willing soul, prepared to teach anything.

  It’s right that the butchers should be honoured

  But perhaps not every butcher?

  Which ones then should I not honour? Perhaps

  I am already lost: I called

  The Führer a saint, merely.

  I’ll do anything, but

  I’m human and I may go astray.

  When the incorruptible lawyer . . .

  When the incorruptible lawyer

  Book of the law in hand

  Stood in the old court of law

  With, in front of him, on the desk with the deep grooves

  Worn by the elbows of the prosecutors

  The bloody shoes of the murder victim

  And was about to begin his speech—

  Soldiers came and took away the desk from beneath his elbows

  Threw the shoes on the rubbish heap before his very eyes

  Tore the book from his fingers and gave him in its place

  A new book with new laws.

  Whereas from that room the listeners

  Hurried, bustling and in fear.

  Turning the pages of the new book the lawyer recognized

  The old words on the familiar pages, only now they denoted

  Other things. The murderer was now called

  “The victim of violence”. Homes laid waste

  Were “in the process of reconstruction”. Theft was called

  “The receipt of alms”. Compulsory was “voluntary”.

  He who exercised arbitrary power now “shouldered responsibility”.

  Whereas he who asked where
goodness had gone was called

  “Troublemaker”. In the same way

  Truth was now called “lies”. Many more words

  Were changed, but had not

  Altogether disappeared.

  Deeply troubled the prosecutor searched through

  The new book. So does the law

  Live on? he thought. And is it merely changed?

  That is surely thinkable. Where everything is in flux

  So too the law can change! Why not?

  The Roman Emperor Nero . . .

  The Roman Emperor Nero, who likewise

  Craved recognition as a great artist, is said

  At the sight of Rome in flames at his bidding, high on a tower

  To have strummed his harp. On a similar occasion

  The Führer, at the sight of a burning building, got out

  His pencil and sketched

  The sweeping groundplan

  Of a new palace. So, in their choice of artform

  They differ, these two.

  The Emperor Napoleon and my friend the carpenter

  The great Emperor Napoleon

  In fact was somewhat short

  But all the wide world trembled

  At his every little fart.

  All the world trembled.

  The reason? He had cannons

  And smashed everything to bits

  And all who did not tremble

  He told them they were shit.

  But everyone trembled.

  My friend, he’s a carpenter

  He works, he never stops

  But if he ever asks for anything

  They tell him: shut your trap.

  All tell him: shut your trap

  And if my friend had cannons

  And was an idle slob

  He could get whatever he wanted

  And nobody would say: shut your gob.

  Not one would say: shut your gob.

  Medea from Łódź

  There is an old old story

  A thousand years old or more

  About a woman called Medea

  Who arrived on a foreign shore

  And it was the man who loved her

  Who brought her there. He said

  My house and home are yours now

  And here you lay your head.

  The language she spoke

  Was not the same as theirs

  For milk and bread and love

  Their words were not hers.

  The way she walked was different

  And she had different hair.

  They looked at her askance

  She was never at home there.

  And what became of her

  Is told by Euripides

  To a bitter end, long long ago

  In his mighty choruses.

  Now the wind passes over the rubble

  Of that inhospitable town

  And over the stones they stoned her with

  Who wasn’t one of their own.

  Now suddenly we hear

  There are stories going round

  That once again Medeas

  Are being seen in our towns.

  Through the trams, the cars, the trains

  The hue and cry again

  In 1934

  In this city of ours, Berlin.

  The inquiry

  The authorities are conducting an inquiry

  So they say. In this city district

  People no longer sleep at night.

  No one knows who it was

  Nor what crime was committed

  Everyone is a suspect.

  When the people spend their nights sweeping suspicion from their doorsteps

  The crimes of the powers that be

  Pile up

  Unheeded.

  Little songs for Steff

  Once there was a hawk

  Whom many thought a dork

  His critics had a go at him

  And said as an aside

  He couldn’t even swim.

  Of course he had to have a go

  And sank at once, and so:

  The critics all felt justified.

  Once there was a crow

  A sly old so-and-so

  To whom a young canary

  Sang from behind the bars:

  “Of art

  Thou knowest not a fart.”

  The crow retorted wearily

  If only you had a voice like me

  You’d have the benefit of being free.

  Once there was a hound

  Who never made a sound

  His mouth was far too small

  And he hardly ate at all.

  His master said, I’m glad I found

  Such an economical hound.

  There was once a one-legged pig

  Who couldn’t dance a jig.

  He fell upon his tail and slid.

  Into the flower bed

  But he couldn’t give a fig

  He was a real pig.

  Yet a long while we watched him rowing . . .

  Yet a long while we watched him rowing. Right to the falls

  He strained to reach the bank. But the falls

  Tore him down in the end. What he feared

  Came to pass. His enemy

  He did not kill; himself, he lost his life. But

  To those who struggled with him he bequeathed

  An enemy weakened.

  Downfall of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah

  1

  The city of Sodom and the city of Gomorrah

  Can best be thought of just like our own cities.

  Like our city Berlin and like our London.

  Neither more splendid nor more shabby, neither

  Richer, nor yet poorer, uninhabitable

  And yet un-leavable, just like London

  And Berlin, so were Sodom and Gomorrah.

  2

  Their sins were like our own

  Stale and shameless. With golden scrapers

  They scratched their sores and the laurels

  Withered when they came into contact

  With those foreheads. And laughter

  Rose up out of the gardens and out of the factories

  Rose smoke.

  Now, however, that humanity, in its unending progress . . .

  Now, however, that humanity, in its unending progress, was

  As the classics predict, so mired in that condition

  Where every progress and every new invention

  Plunges humanity into ever deeper inhumanity

  Language also began to decay, and every sort of communication

  Was rendered vain

  with overbearing fists

  They beat on the stolen table. And yet the seer saw

  How their hands dropped from their crumbling joints and how they

  Had secretly to stuff them back on. With threatening fingers

  They pointed out the victims to their hangmen. But the seer

  Saw how they bent down, secretly, groaning, to gather up the rotting fingers

  From the floor, with mistrustful wandering eyes.

  The seer saw many such things! The listener heard many such things!

  Things of which no one spoke!

  The dam

  This song is in praise of the engineer Charles Howell

  Who lived in London, in Baker Street, where he received a telegram

  Calling him to the West African administrative headquarters

  Along with the commission to build a dam in the southern Congo

  At an unnamed spot on the map.

  The wrangles over the remuneration took nine days

  Were bitterly contested and ended satisfactorily.

  But the money, deposited in Barclays Bank

  Was never claimed.

  This man, who leaves England one foggy morning

  In Harwich, accompanied to the ship by four friends and

  A Mrs Howell, swiftly married, a conquest made under time pressure

  Le
aves

  Two clubs with their open fires, newspapers and meals

  The morning walk over Tower Bridge to the office

  The fishing waters of Scotland, preserved for

  The years between fifty and seventy.

  He is forty years old now, hopes to be eighty one day, and has but

  Ten months to live.

  It is not only the getting married that’s hard, building dams is too,

  Especially in a country where there are no hotels, where scaffolding

  Concrete and steel mesh don’t grow wild, and the labour force

  Cannot read (granted

  They can’t read the wage lists either!), and marrying

  May come easier under the pressure of time, but

  Not so with the building of dams.

  He set off in a bridal carriage, and now travels on in an ox-cart.

  He wages his fights with the local administration

  He wins enemies and warrants, he’ll need the latter

  The former

  Will not see him again.

  He does not process alone, he leads a troop

  He is general and quartermaster

  And at night he works at his designs, according to the stories

  Of deceitful folk who claim to have been there.

  All for the moneys deposited in Barclays Bank.

  Twelve days’ journey from the coast he learns

  That he has been cheated by the authorities

  In the calculation of his reward: in the place where he is bound

  There is a pernicious sickness.

  He destroys the message.