by Tom Kuhn
But the snowstorms have their hats on.
The earthquakes have cash in their jacket pockets.
The mountains step out of limousines.
And the tearing rivers hold sway over the police.
2
In order to show what I see
I read the portrayals of other peoples and other ages.
A couple of plays I even copied, carefully
Trying out their techniques and committing to memory
Anything that might prove useful.
I studied the portrayals of the great feudal figures
In English writers, opulent individuals
To whom the world served for them to unfold their greatness.
I studied the moralizing Spaniards
The Indians, masters of fine sentiment
And the Chinese, who portray the family
And the many-hued fates of people in the cities.
And I set the sentences . . .
And I set the sentences in such a way that their effects
Became visible, so that
To have spoken them, could make
The speaker happy or unhappy. And others too
Could be made unhappy, or happy, that the speaker spoke to them thus.
(This made the watching of the plays more difficult: the first
Effect was often achieved only on the second viewing.)
I always executed . . .
I always executed
Every movement as before the gathering
Which will adjudge it, just as someone
Who carefully, anxious to recall precisely
How it was and how it could be
Serves up everything, the truth, to the judgement of
The gathering which has the final decision.
And the appearance of the houses and cities . . .
And the appearance of the houses and cities
Changed so quickly in my time, that going away for two years
And then returning was as a journey to another city
And in their great host the people changed their appearance
In a few years I saw
Workers entering the gate of the factory and the gate was high
But when they came out again they had to bend low.
And I said to myself:
Everything changes and is only for its own time.
So I gave every setting its mark
And I branded every factory yard with the year, and every room
As the drovers mark their flocks with their number, so as to recognize them.
And the sentences too that were spoken there
I gave them their mark, so that they were like quotations
Of the transient, logged
So that they should not be forgotten.
What that woman in her work smock said
Bent over the handbills, in those years
And how the stock exchange traders spoke with their clerks
Their hats pushed back, yesterday
All that I furnished with the mark of impermanence
The date.
But I also offered everything up for astonishment
Even the most familiar.
That the mother offered her breast to the child
That I reported as if it were something that no one would believe.
That the porter slammed the door to the man in the freezing cold
Like something that no one has ever seen.
Suggestion to merge architecture with lyric poetry
Why not adorn your splendid buildings with inscriptions
Oh you who build them, rifles slung on shoulders?
They ought to carry, chiselled in the boulders
The slogans of the classes that construct them.
Record as well how carefully you planned the use!
And that it’s meant for all, write that down too!
That for the first time you built something for yourselves
So let the stone bear witness after you!
As for your poets, those who sing in praise
Of them who just this once in truth deserve it
(The first to do so since the ancient days!)
When then the mason asks them for the wording
They’ll know, only the best, and those alone:
For they can see, it’s hard to cut words into stone.
What use is goodness . . .
1
What use is goodness
When the goodly are at once struck down or else those are struck down
To whom they are good?
What use is freedom
When the free have to live amongst the unfree?
What use is reason
When only unreason will procure the food that a body needs.
2
Instead of merely being good, exert yourselves
To create conditions conducive to goodness, or better still:
That make it superfluous!
Instead of merely being free, exert yourselves
To create conditions which make everyone free
And make the love of freedom
Superfluous!
Instead of merely being reasonable, exert yourselves
To create conditions which make the unreason of the few
A poor business.
As one who comes . . .
As one who comes to the counter with an important letter after office hours: the counter is already closed.
As one who tries to warn the city of a flood: but he speaks a different language: he is not understood.
As a beggar who knocks on a door for the fifth time, where he has received food four times before: the fifth time he goes hungry.
As one whose blood flows from a wound as he waits for a doctor: the blood goes on flowing.
So we come and report that we have suffered misdeeds.
When it was reported for the first time that our friends were slowly being slaughtered, there was a cry of horror. One hundred had been killed.
But when a thousand had been killed and there was no end to the slaughter, silence descended.
When the misdeeds come as the rain falls, then no one any longer cries halt.
When the crimes pile up, they become invisible.
When the suffering becomes unbearable, the screams are no longer heard.
The screams too fall like the summer rain.
Old woman outside the church
Sunday morning. On the bench opposite the church
An old woman of the lower classes.
The organ is playing inside. She listens to the sparrows.
Her sisters are praying to the god for mercy. She gleans
A few warming rays of the sun as a tired reaper does
Forgotten ears of corn.
Letter to the playwright Clifford Odets
Comrade, in your play Paradise Lost you show
How the families of the exploiters
Are destroyed in the end.
What is the idea?
Perhaps the families of the exploiters
Are indeed destroyed. And if not?
Would they stop exploiting as they fall into degeneracy, or
Do we prefer to be exploited when they are
Not degenerate? Should the hungry
Go on being hungry so long as he who denies them their bread
Is fit and healthy?
Or do you mean to tell us that our oppressors
Have already weakened? Should we
Let our hands rest in our laps? Such were the pictures
Comrade, that our housepainter painted for us, and overnight
We got to feel the full force of our degenerate exploiters.
Or might you even feel pity for them? Should we
When we see the roaches leaving, shed a tear?
You, comrade, who had pity for the man
Who has nothing to eat, do you now have pity
For him who has eaten himself sick?
; The tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the Revolution
The Unknown Soldier of the Revolution is fallen.
I saw his tomb in a dream.
It lay in a peatbog. It was fashioned of two boulders.
It bore no inscription. But one of the stones
Started to speak.
He who lies here, it said, marched out
Not to conquer a foreign land, but rather
His own. His name
Is not known, but the history books
Give the names of those who defeated him.
Because he wanted to live like a human being
He was slain like a wild animal.
His last words were as a whisper
For they came from a choked throat, but
The cold wind carried them everywhere
To the many cold and hungry.
The passenger
When many years ago I learnt
To drive a car, my teacher made me
Smoke a cigar, and if
In the bustle of traffic or in a tight bend it
Went out on me, he chased me from the wheel. He also
Told jokes as I drove, and if
Too occupied with driving, I did not laugh, he took the wheel
Out of my hands. I feel unsafe, he said
I, the passenger, take fright, when I see
That the driver of the car is too occupied
With driving.
Since then, when I’m at work
I make sure not to immerse myself too deeply in the work
I pay attention to things around me
Sometimes I interrupt the work in order to have a conversation.
Driving faster than I can while also smoking
Is a habit I have given up. I am thinking of
The passenger.
He who learns
First I built on sand, then I built on rock.
When the rock gave way
I stopped building altogether.
Then I built again, and often
On sand and rock, as it came, but
I had learnt.
Those to whom I had entrusted the letter
Threw it away. But those I had taken no heed of
Brought it back to me.
And so I learnt.
The tasks I assigned were not carried out.
When I came I saw
They were wrong. The right things
Had been done.
From that I learnt.
The scars are painful
In the cold times.
But I often said: only the grave
Will teach me nothing more.
The man who fears transience
And he leaping swiftly from ice floe sinking
To sinking ice floe
Passing many a place which
As he says he will see no more
Now encounters only those who are passing away and hears
Transience and flees and sees
Sinking and breathless the yellow fleeting tree and
Turns pale
The people who stole the book that was yours . . .
The people who stole the book that was yours in the cradle
Reproach you for being ill-read.
Sitting by the roadside or at the lathe
If you eat your bread with grimy hands
They tell you accusingly your table manners are bad.
The man who defends himself when hands are at his throat
And stopping his breath, there’s a law that intercedes
And cries: He acted in self-defence. But
That same law looks away and steps aside
When they stop your bread and you defend yourselves.
But you die if you don’t eat and if you don’t eat enough you die
Only more slowly. All the years dying
You are not permitted to defend yourselves.
A glass of water for Comrade Alfred!
1
A glass of water for Comrade Alfred!
The truth must come to his ears!
Deal gently with Comrade Alfred!
Don’t speak too harshly to dear Comrade Alfred!
In the Party these seventeen years!
2
A mistake by Comrade Alfred?
But why, but what, how come?
That’s out of the question with Comrade Alfred!
You’d best just ask Comrade Alfred!
The back office, it must have been them!
3
A job for Comrade Alfred!
What indeed could be finer!
And that’s the best job for Comrade Alfred!
So let’s give the job to Comrade Alfred!
Our senior Party-liner!
Poems in exile
Just what they need for their livelihood
That’s all they take from foreign ground. Sparingly
They dispense their memories.
No one calls to them. No one stops them.
They are not scolded, they are not praised.
As they have no present
They try to lend themselves permanence. Only in order to reach their goal
Which is far distant
Do they attempt to better themselves.
Carelessly the busy man fishes
For a bite to eat. The sleepless
Need no sleeping place.
With their forebears
They have more connections than with their contemporaries
And most greedily they
Who appear to have no present
Look upon their descendants.
What they say, they say from memory
They travel without passport, without papers
Journey from the land of freedom into the land of oppression
I come from the land of freedom.
The priests declare openly from the pulpits their opinion:
That the exploited, when once they are dead
Will escape exploitation. Above the clouds
They sit and eat sweet bread.
Those who were more long-suffering on earth get more bread.
This is bread you can order in advance.
The sacristan goes slowly between the pews and holds out the collecting tin
To the hungry.
From the land of freedom I came into the land of oppression.
Now I have to choose.
They sawed off the branches
They sawed off the branches on which they were sitting
And, shouting, exchanged knowledge of
How one might saw faster, and fell
Crashing into the depths, and those who looked on
Shook their heads as they sawed and
Went on sawing.
On teaching without pupils
Teaching without pupils
Writing without fame
Are hard.
It is good to go off in the morning
With your freshly written pages
To the waiting printer, over the humming marketplace
Where they sell meat and tools
You sell sentences.
The driver drove quickly
He hadn’t had breakfast
Every bend was a risk
He steps hurriedly in
He whom he came to fetch
Has already gone his way.
There speaks one to whom no one listens:
He speaks too loudly
He repeats himself
What he says is wrong
No one corrects him.
Interrogation of the good man
Step forward: we hear
You are a good man.
You are not corrupt, but the lightning
Which strikes the house, is also
Not corrupt.
When you’ve said something, you stick with it.
What did you say?
You are honest, you say what you think.
What do you think?
You are brave.
> Facing whom?
You are wise.
On whose behalf?
You don’t think of your own advantage.
Whose do you think of?
You are a good friend.
Also of good people?
So listen: we know
You are our enemy. That’s why we now want
To stand you against a wall. But considering your services
And good qualities
Against a good wall and shoot you with
Good bullets from good rifles and bury you with
A good shovel in good earth.
In long years of study . . .
In long years of study
We prepared ourselves to take part in the exploitation of the lower orders
We studied jurisprudence, which is so difficult
Because common sense contradicts it
And what an effort we made, and once we were in a position
To exercise injustice
Then suddenly the race of your grandmother was to
Decide how much of the loot you got!
What has the race of your grandmother