by Tom Kuhn
2
When a good man wants to go
How can you hold him back?
Tell him why he is needed.
That will hold him.
3
What could hold Lenin?
4
The soldier thought:
When he hears that the exploiters are coming
Even if he’s sick he will still rise up.
Perhaps he will come on crutches
Perhaps he will let himself be carried, but
He will rise up and come
To fight against the exploiters.
5
For the soldier knew that Lenin
Had fought against the exploiters
All his life.
6
When, back then, the soldier had helped
In the storming of the Winter Palace
He wanted to go home, because
The fields of the landowners were being shared out
But Lenin said to him: stay a while!
There are still exploiters.
And as long as there are exploiters
Someone has to fight them.
As long as there is you
You must fight them.
7
The weak don’t fight. The stronger
Fight for perhaps an hour.
Those who are yet stronger fight for many years. But
The strongest fight all their lives. They
Are indispensable.
8
(Praise of the revolutionary)
When oppression is growing
Many are discouraged
But his courage increases.
He mounts his struggle
For another penny in wages, for hot water for tea
And for the power in the state.
He asks of property:
Where do you come from?
He asks of opinions:
Whom do you serve?
Where people are silent
There he will speak
And where oppression rules and the talk is of fate
He will name names.
Where he sits down at the table
Discontent joins the party
The food is meagre, after all
The room is revealed as too small.
Wherever they chase him, there
Insurgency follows, and where he is driven out
Unrest remains.
9
At the time when Lenin died and his absence was felt
Victory had been won, but the country was laid waste.
The masses had set out on their journey, but
The way was dark.
When Lenin died
The soldiers sat down on the kerb and wept
And the workers ran from the machines and
Shook their fists.
10
When Lenin went, it was
As if the tree had said to the leaves:
I’m leaving.
11
Since then, fifteen years have passed.
One sixth of the earth
Is freed from exploitation.
At the call: the exploiters are coming!
The masses will rise up again and again
Ready to fight.
12
Lenin is enshrined
In the great heart of the working class.
He was our teacher.
He fought with us.
He is enshrined
In the great heart of the working class.
Epitaph for Gorky
Here lies
The emissary of the slums
Chronicler of the tormentors of the people
And of their adversaries
Educated in the universities of the highroads and byways
Lowly born
Who helped do away with the system of high and low
The people’s teacher
Who learnt from the people.
V
GERMAN SATIRES
For the German Freedom Radio Station
The book burnings
When the regime ordered that books with harmful knowledge
Should be publicly burnt, and all around
Oxen were forced to drag cartloads of books
To the pyre, one banished poet
One of the best, discovered, studying the list of the burnt
To his horror, that his books
Had been forgotten. He hurried to his desk
On wings of rage, and wrote a letter to the powers that be.
Burn me! he wrote, his pen flying, burn me!
Don’t do this to me! Don’t pass me over! Have I not always told
The truth in my books? And now
I am treated by you as a liar! I order you:
Burn me!
Dream of a great bellyache
During a potato shortage
I had a dream:
Opposite the opera house
Where the housepainter was onstage, delivering his big speech
A huge potato suddenly arrived, bigger than a small mountain
And before the expectant populace
It too delivered a speech.
I, she said in a deep voice
Have come to warn you. I know of course
I’m just a potato, an unworthy
Insignificant person, not much respected, hardly mentioned
In the history books, without influence
In higher circles. When there’s talk
Of great things, “honour” and “glory”, I have to take a back seat.
It’s said to be ignoble
To prefer me to glory. All the same, I’ve
Helped many to get by, in this vale of tears.
And now they say it’s time to choose
Between me and him in there! Now it’s
Him or me. If you choose him
You will lose me. But if you think you need me
Then you must drive him out. And so I say
You’d better not pay too much attention to him in there
Else he would drive me out. Even when he threatens you with death
Should you dare to rise against him, you must consider that
Without me you will die anyway, you and your children.
Thus spake the potato, and slowly
As the housepainter continued roaring in the opera
Heard by all the people, over the loudspeakers, she began, as if by way of proof
An eerie demonstration, seen by all the people, in that she
With every word the housepainter uttered, withered
Became smaller, more miserable and more sickly.
The Service Train
1
On the express order of the Führer
The saloon train that is being built for the Nuremberg Party Conference will bear
The simple moniker SERVICE TRAIN. That means
Those who ride in it, by virtue of riding, are doing the German people
A service.
2
The Service Train
Is a masterpiece of rail coach building. The passengers
Have their own suites. Through wide windows
They watch the German peasants labouring in the fields.
If they should chance to break into a sweat at this sight
They can take a swift bath
In tiled bathrooms.
By means of a sophisticated lighting system they can
By night, whether sitting, standing or lying, read the newspapers
With their fulsome reports of the blessings
Of the regime. The individual suites
Are connected by telephone
Like the tables in certain dance halls, where the gentlemen
Can telephone the ladies at the neighbouring tables to ask the price.
Without rising from their beds, the guests can
Turn on the radio, and listen to the great reports
Of the disadvantages of other regimes. They can have t
heir dinner
If they wish, served in their own suites and they can relieve themselves
In their own toilets, inlaid with marble.
They crap
On Germany.
The difficulty of governing
1
Ministers are always telling the people
How hard it is to govern. Without the ministers
Wheat would grow down into the ground instead of upwards.
Not a single lump of coal would emerge from the mine
If the Chancellor were not so wise. Without the Minister for Propaganda
No woman would ever get pregnant. Without the Minister for War
There would never be a war. Indeed, it is questionable
Whether the sun would rise in the morning
Without the Führer’s express approval and, if it did, then
In the wrong place.
2
It is just as difficult, so they tell us
To manage a factory. Without the owner
The walls would fall in and the machines rust, so they say.
Even if, somewhere, a plough was nonetheless made
It would never get to the fields without
The smart words that the businessman writes to the peasants: who
Else could let them know that there is such a thing as a plough? And what
Would become of the big farms without the landowners? For sure
They’d start sowing the rye where they had already set the potatoes.
3
If governing was easy
We wouldn’t need such enlightened minds as the Führer.
If the worker knew how to operate his machine
And if the peasant could tell a field from a pastry board
Then we’d need neither an owner for the factory nor for the land.
It’s only because they’re all so thick
That we need a few who are so smart.
4
Or could it be perhaps
That governing is only so hard
Because exploitation and double-dealing have to be learnt?
The necessity of propaganda
1
It is possible that not everything in our country is quite as it should be.
But no one can doubt that the propaganda is good.
Even the hungry must concede
That the Minister for Food talks well.
2
When, in a single day, the regime had
A thousand people murdered, without
Inquiry or the verdict of a court
The Propaganda Minister lauded the inexhaustible patience of the Führer
Who had waited so long with the butchery
And had loaded the scoundrels with rewards and honours
In such a masterful speech that
On that day, not only the relatives of the victims
But even the butchers themselves, wept.
3
And when, another time, the greatest airship of the Reich
Went up in flames, because they had filled it with inflammable gas
In order to save the non-flammable for military purposes
The Aviation Minister promised, standing by the coffins of the dead
That he would not be discouraged—at which
There was loud applause. From the coffins themselves
It is said, there came clapping.
4
And how masterful is the propaganda campaign
Against litter and for the Führer’s book!
Everyone is enjoined to pick up the Führer’s book
Wherever it has been left lying.
In order to make propaganda for rag collection the mighty Göring
Has declared himself the greatest rag-and-bone man of all time and
To house his collection, has built, in the middle of the Reich’s capital city
A palace
Which is itself as big as a city.
5
A good propagandist
Can turn a dung heap into a beauty spot.
If there’s no fat, then he’ll demonstrate
How everyone can benefit from a slimmer waistline.
Thousands who hear him speak of the motorways
Are filled with pleasure—almost as if they had cars.
On the graves of those who have starved to death and died for the cause
He plants laurels. But even long before it came to this
He spoke of peace, as the cannons rolled by.
6
It took a sublime effort of propaganda
To persuade the millions that
The expansion of the army is a work of peace
Every new tank a peace dove
And every new regiment renewed proof
Of a profound love of peace.
7
All the same: however much good talk can achieve
It cannot achieve everything. Some people
Have been heard to say: Pity
That the word “meat” alone cannot fill us up, and pity
That the word “clothing” cannot keep us warm.
When the Minister delivers a speech in praise of the wonderful new fabric
It had better not rain, or else
His listeners will be standing there in shirtsleeves.
8
And something else gives us pause to reflect
On the purpose of all this propaganda: the more propaganda there is in our country
The less there is of anything else.
The improvements of the regime
1
If you ask around, you hear: there have been many improvements.
Many, who for a long time had no work
Now have work. It’s true
They still go hungry. Although
Wages have not decreased, it’s just that
Food has become more expensive. But some butchers
They fetched from their shops and locked up
When they put up the prices too quickly. White flour
Which is, by the way, lumpier than it used to be
Costs no more than it used to, it’s just that
To every pound of white flour you have to take a pound of black flour
And that’s no good for anything. On the other hand
There are some factories where you can get lunch
For just twenty pfennigs, big helpings too, that
Is a great improvement, pity
That there are so few of these factories. Mind you
Many people know someone who works in such a factory.
Sometimes at Christmas in some factory or other there’s a spontaneous
Distribution of money, everyone gets some, they say then
The Führer has got his way.
2
The Führer watches over the prices too. That’s the only reason
For example, you can still get a coat for the old price, even if
It’ll wear out quicker than it used to. Altogether
The Führer keeps a sharp eye on the capitalists. Of course
The dividends have gone up, but they say
The capitalists now pocket their profits
In trepidation, and at least once every year on the first of May
There in front of the simple workers who
Do the heavy work for them, there’s a state decree they have to
Publicly doff their hats.
3
The regime takes care of amusement too.
The holiday cruises on state-owned ships are popular. Few
Think, as they sit on that ship, of the deductions.
The money that was taken
They’d given up for lost. The contributions
Were compulsory, the holiday cruise
Comes as if it were a free gift from the state.
He who has lost money also takes pleasure
If he gets just a part of it back.
4
So there are
improvements wherever we look, and all that talk of them
Fills the mouths of the hungry. When
Instead of one drop in the ocean there are now two drops
Is that not an improvement? Not everyone recognizes
That what has been improved is merely the system of exploitation
That extortion has got more efficient and the methods
Of repression improve
With every day.
The fears of the regime
1
A foreign traveller, returning from the Third Reich
When asked who in truth holds sway there, answered:
Fear.
2
Fearfully
The scholar breaks off the discussion and looks
Ashen-faced, at the thin walls of his study. The teacher
Lies sleepless, brooding over
An enigmatic word that the inspector let fall.
The old woman at the grocer’s
Lays her trembling finger on her lips, holding back
Angry words about the poor-quality flour. Fearfully
The doctor surveys the marks at his patient’s throat. Gripped by fear
The parents look upon their children as if they were traitors.
Even the dying
Lower their failing voices when they
Take leave of their relations.
3
But the brownshirts too
Are fearful of the man whose arm does not fly up in greeting
And take fright at anyone who
Wishes them a good morning.
The shrill voices of those who give orders
Are filled with fear like the squeaking
Of piglets awaiting the butcher’s knife. The fat arses
Sweat with fear in their office chairs.
Driven by fear
They break into homes and search through the bathrooms
And it is fear