The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht

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The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht Page 41

by Tom Kuhn


  But he made him pay the price

  Before he took a bite to eat.

  It was a bus driver called Krobart

  To whom he was betrayed

  When in his distress

  Wallisch called the man “comrade”.

  That man it was who sold him

  Instead of helping, and so

  Wallisch grew steadily colder

  As if up to his neck in snow.

  And when they phoned Vienna

  To ask what was for the best

  Parliament, bless them all,

  Had just gone into recess.

  And when they sought to find

  What the Christian Chancellor thought

  The Chancellor was at prayer

  And not to be disturbed.

  In Leoben in Styria

  At the eleventh hour that night

  They hanged Wallisch by the neck

  As an enemy of the state.

  He called out for freedom

  With his very dying breath

  And two hangmen hung on his legs

  Because he wasn’t weight enough.

  To the mockery of humanity

  That February ’34

  They hanged a man who’d fought

  For the oppressed and poor

  Koloman Wallisch

  The carpenter’s son.

  Brother, now’s the time

  Brother, hold the line

  Pass the invisible flag down through the ranks!

  In dying no different from when you were living

  You’ll not give in, comrade, there’s no forgiving

  Today you’re defeated, the others have won

  But the war only ends when the last battle’s done

  But the war only ends when the last battle’s done.

  Brother, now’s the time

  Brother, hold the line

  Pass the invisible flag down through the ranks!

  Oppression or justice, the balance is shifting

  We’ll throw off our chains and the clouds will be lifting.

  Today you’re defeated, the others have won

  But the war only ends when the last battle’s done

  But the war only ends when the last battle’s done.

  Recently I heard tell . . .

  1

  Recently I heard tell

  That great honours are planned for them.

  It is said the rulers

  Will shower them with praises.

  2

  He for whom they plough the fields

  Will call them hard-working.

  He for whom they weave the coat

  And make a new one when the old

  Is crumpled from lying about

  Fully intends to write them a good reference.

  3

  The cow is no longer to be disparaged. The milk

  Is to be carried aloft to songs of praise.

  No one who sits on high

  Shall look down upon those who wade in the dirt.

  4

  If these honours indeed come about

  Then, amongst those who hunger

  There will be great joy.

  Song of the workers and peasants

  1

  We didn’t beat about the bush

  We simply asked for what was just.

  Worker and peasant asked if they

  Could have their due at last, today

  The coal they hack and the cloth they weave

  And the bread they harvest sheaf by sheaf

  And there was no answer . . .

  So hand over the factories! Hand over the fields, now!

  We’ve waited enough. We won’t wait anymore!

  No excuses, no delay

  Let’s have what we’re due today!

  2

  They told us we were brothers, man to man

  We listened and then we asked again:

  Worker and peasant asked if they

  Could have their due at last, today

  The coal they hack and the cloth they weave

  And the bread they harvest sheaf by sheaf

  And there was no answer . . .

  So hand over the steelworks! Hand over the farms!

  We’ve waited enough. We won’t wait more!

  No excuses, no delay

  Let’s have what we’re due today!

  3

  They told us the honour was ours all right!

  We took them in a clinch to give them a fright:

  Worker and peasant asked if they

  Could have their due at last, today

  The coal they hack and the cloth they weave

  And the bread they harvest sheaf by sheaf

  And there was no answer . . .

  So hand over the steelworks! Hand over the farms!

  We’ve waited enough. We won’t wait more!

  No excuses, no delay

  Let’s have what we’re due today!

  4

  And then they said we should just wait

  They took us for fools, that was plain

  Worker and peasant asked if they

  Could have their due at last, today

  The coal they hack and the cloth they weave

  And the bread they harvest sheaf by sheaf

  And there was no answer . . .

  So hand over the steelworks! Hand over the farms!

  We’ve waited enough. We won’t wait more!

  Let’s not fright or shy away!

  Let’s have what we are due today!

  Worker and peasant, take up arms!

  Napoleon

  The Revolution had come and gone

  Then Napoleon came along

  He got crowned Emperor by the bourgeoisie

  For they were now masters in gay Paree.

  His marshals were all barmaid’s sons

  He paid good wages to his grenadier guns.

  His powerful artillery

  Lent its weight to industry.

  The other nations chased him out

  But their lazy princes hung about.

  And snaffled all there was to be had:

  When the very worst drove out the bad.

  Report from Germany

  We hear that in Germany

  In the days of the Brown Plague

  On the roof of an engineering works suddenly

  In the November wind a red flag fluttered

  The forbidden flag of freedom!

  That grey November day from the skies

  Fell a raw mixture of rain and snow

  But it was the seventh, the day of the Revolution!

  And behold, the red flag!

  In the yards the workers stand

  Shielding their eyes with their hands, and look

  Into the sleet and up to the roof.

  Then come the lorries with the stormtroopers

  And they drive all those in overalls against the walls

  And bind with ropes all those calloused fists

  And out of the barracks and from the interrogation

  They stumble, beaten and bloodied

  But not one of them has named the man

  Who was up on the roof.

  This is how they drive away all those who keep their silence

  And the rest, they’ve had enough already.

  But the next day, there once again

  Flying from the roof of the works

  The red flag of the proletariat. Once again

  Through the deathly quiet of the town

  The boots of the stormtroops thunder. In the yards

  There are no men to be seen now. Only women

  Stand there with stony faces, shielding their eyes

  They look into the sleet and up to the roof.

  And the beatings begin again. Under interrogation

  The women testify: this flag

  Is a bed-sheet, on it we

  Carried away one who died yesterday.

  We are not to blame for the colour.

  It�
��s red with the blood of the man you murdered.

  Walking next to the loathsome, the virtuous . . .

  Walking next to the loathsome, the virtuous now take their places

  Scientists walk with the liars and doctors walk with the butchers

  Architects, dreaming of fame and mindful of the accomplishments

  Of past generations, build them their prisons, with schools alongside

  So that the crowds, bewildered, admire the graceful proportions

  Gaze on the sweep of a roof, or the elegant lines of a doorway

  Which perhaps in time to come may close on their own sons forever.

  So too the friends of music now take delight in the latest blend

  Of teasing soundscapes, in hymns that seek to transfigure

  Sacrifice in the service of bandits and warmongers.

  Oh, but this music and the work of artists and architects

  Are but pale imitation, of true art a gross profanation

  Fashioned from hand-me-down fragments, with none of the verve that might

  Herald a new age for humanity—and yet they appear to the masses

  To show the new rulers hand in hand with the artists.

  What subverts

  In the first months of the National Socialist regime

  A worker in a small town on the Czech border

  Was condemned to prison for smuggling communist leaflets.

  Since of his five children one had already starved to death

  The judge was reluctant to send him to prison for long, and so

  At the public hearing he asked him, whether he had perhaps just

  Been subverted by communist propaganda.

  I don’t know what you mean, said the worker, but my child

  Was subverted by hunger.

  [Two questions]

  How should one

  Hate oppression, if one does not

  Hate the oppressors?

  The hungry, who

  Take your last loaf, you see as your enemy.

  But the thief who has never gone hungry

  You do not leap at his throat.

  We unhappy wretches!

  The prey of the hunt is still brought down

  Just as it was brought down in our time

  The meat still falls in the same place, but

  We have been driven away!

  What an injustice:

  Because of the form of our noses and colour of our hair

  We are denied our part in the quarry!

  Some of us were even chased over the border, because

  Our nerves gave up in the face of the hardly human

  Appearance of the exploited and the condition

  Of their sleeping places, rags and fodder!

  Gripped by weakness we demanded

  In mellifluous words, that these too should be helped.

  These mellifluous words plunged us into misfortune

  (Unless it was the form of our noses and colour of our hair)

  There we were, sitting with the ruling classes at their table

  Eating the good fare and cursing the butchers

  The butchers who slaughtered the calf we were eating

  Because of the blood on their aprons!

  And then the butchers threw us out.

  The age of my prosperity

  Seven weeks of my life I was rich.

  From the proceeds of a play I bought myself

  A house in a big garden. I had looked

  On it for more weeks than I then lived in it. At different times of day

  And at night too, I walked past, to observe

  How the old trees stood over the lawns in the early dawn

  Or the pond with the mossy carp of a rainy morning

  To see the hedges in the full sun of midday

  The white rhododendrons in the evening, after vesper bells.

  Then I moved in with my friends. My car

  Stood there beneath the spruces. We looked about: there was nowhere from which

  You could see all the bounds of this garden, the slope of the lawns

  And the groups of trees prevented the hedges from looking one to another.

  The house itself was fine too. The staircase of a noble wood, and expertly worked

  With low steps and a well-proportioned handrail. The whitewashed rooms

  Had wood-panelled ceilings. Great iron stoves

  Daintily formed were wrought with scenes: of labouring peasants.

  Into the cool hall with its oak benches and tables

  Led heavy doors, their brass handles

  Not carelessly chosen, and the stone flags around the brownish house

  Smooth and worn by the footsteps

  Of earlier inhabitants. What genial proportions! Each room different

  And each one the best! And how they changed with the time of day!

  The change of the seasons, surely delightful, we never experienced, for

  After seven weeks of real prosperity we left that property, soon to

  Flee over the border.

  The delight of ownership was something I felt deeply and I am glad

  To have felt it. To walk through my park, receive guests

  Debate building plans, as others of my profession have done before me

  Gave me pleasure, I confess. Yet seven weeks seem enough.

  I went without regrets, or with few regrets. Writing this

  I already have trouble remembering. When I ask myself

  How many lies I would have been prepared to tell to hold on to that possession

  I know, it is not many. And so I hope

  It was not a bad thing to have the property. It was itself

  Not a little thing, but

  There is more.

  Dannebrog

  Oh don’t try to fool yourselves

  For a life where you might as well be dead—

  Wipe the silly cross from off your flag

  And make it red!

  The great guilt of the Jews

  In our country it’s the Jews who are to blame for all ills.

  Everyone knows from the Führer’s speeches

  That his party was founded only

  To root out the Jews.

  So that means: without the Jews

  There would be no gauleiters and governors

  Living in castles and villas

  Eating and drinking like there’s no tomorrow, and

  Bullying about, not only at home but abroad too,

  So that they then have to raise a gigantic army

  And there would be no two million spies and

  Fifty-eight million spied upon

  There would be no call for the hulking great National Socialist Party

  By which, of an annual national income of some sixty billion

  More than twenty billion are gobbled up.

  On the Jews

  Two thousand years after Aristotle

  Four hundred years after Descartes, after so much instruction

  Great masses of the people still believed in the Devil in human form

  Even physicists, accustomed

  To mistrust the finest of instruments, and historians who

  In their books constantly encountered

  The causes of similar urgings. Mathematicians

  Repudiated formulae written by those

  With noses to which the state took exception. Even the inventors

  Of poison gases and the instruments of death were not welcome, if

  Their hair curled suspiciously at the nape of their necks.

  If the Jews did not counsel against it . . .

  If the Jews did not counsel against it

  The King of England would show our Chancellor his Indian Empire and say:

  Help yourself, do, please. And for ages

  The French Parliament has wanted nothing so much as to make a gift to our Chancellor

  Whose moustache they so admire, of the ore mines of Lorraine

  But th
e Jews won’t let them.

  Before the Führer explained it, we had no idea

  What a clever and powerful people the Jews are.

  Although they are only few and scattered all over the globe

  It seems that, by virtue of their genius, they are masters of it all.

  At a nod from them

  The British lion rolls on his back and wags his tail

  The great city of New York, which reaches up to the heavens, more fears their frowns than it fears an earthquake

  And they’ve got the Pope eating out of their hands.

  Under these circumstances, everyone asks, with a shudder

  What might have become of the earth

  Had the Führer, for his great plans

  Instead of that modestly gifted German nation,

  Chosen the Jewish people.

  The hole in Ilyich’s boot

  You who are making the statue of Ilyich

  Twenty metres high, on the Palace of the Unions

  Don’t forget, in his boot

  That widely attested hole, the symbol of poverty.

  I hear, namely, that he is facing

  West, where many live who, by this hole in his boot

  Will recognize Ilyich as

  One of their own.

  The last request

  In Altona, during a raid on the workers’ quarter

  They caught four of our men. At their execution

  They dragged seventy-five workers along to watch.

  This is what they saw. The youngest, a big man, when asked

  What was his last request (as convention demands)

  Said drily, he desired once more to be able to stretch.

  Released from his fetters, he stretched, and struck

  The leader of the Nazi troops as hard as he could

  With both fists, under the chin. Only then did they bind him

 

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