by Tom Kuhn
The love couldn’t live. The cold came on
Too cold. And tell me how
The little trees should blossom
Under so much snow.
And there was even a war
With another troop of children but
They left off fighting when they saw
There was no sense in it.
And while they were still battling
For a smashed platelayer’s hut
The story goes one side ran out
Of things to eat and that
When the other side heard of this they sent
Them a sack of spuds because
The side that has not cannot fight
As well as the side that has.
Also there was a court case,
It proceeded uneasily.
By the shining light of two candles
They found the judge guilty.
And there was even a helping hand
(Help never hurt anyone).
A girl in service showed them
How to bath a little one
But she only had two hours
To teach them the things she knew
Because her master and mistress
Wanted seeing to.
And also there was a funeral
Of a boy with a velvet coat.
Two Poles and two Germans
Carried the coffin out.
Protestants, Catholics, Nazis
Were there to close the grave
And a little socialist gave a speech
On the future of those still alive.
So there was faith and hope
And not only bread and meat
And let nobody blame them for thieving
Who gave them nothing to eat
And let nobody blame the poor man
Who turned them from his door:
When it’s fifty it’s not self-sacrifice
You need for them, but flour.
You come across two or maybe three
You help them and gladly
But who can sit them down to eat
When they are so many?
In a shelled and rubbled farmhouse
They found a sack of flour.
An eleven-year-old tied her apron round
And baked hour after hour.
They chopped wood for the oven
Stirred and kneaded the dough
But they couldn’t get it to rise because
None of them knew how.
The best they could, they were heading south.
South is where you see
The sun at noon, it is straight ahead
When there’s any sun to see.
They found a wounded soldier
In a pine wood. There he lay.
They tended him for seven days
So he’d show them the way.
He said they should head for Bilgoray
There was fever in his wound.
He died on them on the eighth day
And they dug him into the ground.
And of course there were still signposts
Though muffled under snow
But all turned round so they didn’t point
The right way to go.
And that was for military reasons
And not in cruel fun
But how should they find Bilgoray
In the wrong direction?
They stood around their little leader.
Snow filled the air.
He peered ahead and pointed:
It must be over there.
One night they saw a fire.
They kept away. And then
Once three tanks went rolling by
With human beings in.
And once when they came near a town
They made a detour round
And hid by day and walked by night
Till the town was left behind.
Where south-east Poland used to be
The fifty-five children
Were seen in drifts and driving snow
And then never again.
When I close my eyes I see them
Trekking on and on and on
From one farmstead to another
Shelled-to-pieces everyone.
And above them in the clouds I see
New larger crowds, they process
Against the cold winds toilingly
Homeless, directionless
Looking for a land of peace
Without thunder, without the fire
Not like the land they are coming from
They are more and more and more
Vast numbers and in the twilight
I see that they have become
The children of every race and clime
Who want peace and a house and home.
In Poland that January
A dog was caught, it had
A cardboard round its scraggy neck
With writing on that said:
Please help us, we are lost.
We can’t find the way anymore.
We are fifty-five, the dog will lead
You to where we are
And if you can’t come, drive him away
Don’t shoot at him, he is
The only living creature
Who knows the way to us.
The writing was a child’s.
Peasants read it aloud.
That was a year and a half ago.
The dog hungered and died.
Uncollected Poems 1941–1942
The following poems track Brecht’s move to the United States and register the extreme cultural dislocation he felt there. In the first months in California the poet’s voice, for really the first time in his life, falters: the poems are fewer and shorter, there are beginnings of poems, many fragments, disturbed expressions of discomfort and insecurity. In response to very different things—the turning tides of war above all, but also his reading of other literatures, like Arthur Waley’s translations of Chinese poems—new tones and new voices gradually come into his writing.
The war dog
We, the last troops left up in the mountains
Still fighting the butchers and the villains
Have resolved today in trust and fear
To send out a dog of war
With our names, reporting how we stand
And a cry for help. Although we can’t
Furnish our location, nor even less
Directions, all the same we hope the beast
Will chance upon such as can bring us help
For there must be on earth such people still.
And so we said: you must not fail, hound
Or else our last hope’s lost, if we’re not found.
Ode to a High Dignitary
1
Eminent Vice-Consul, be pleased
To grant your trembling louse
The stamp that will make him happy.
Lofty spirit
In whose image the gods are made
Permit your unfathomable thoughts
To be for one second interrupted.
Four times
I have succeeded in advancing into your presence.
Some few of my words
Composed in sleepless nights
I hope have come near you.
Twice I have had my hair cut on your account
Not once
Have I gone to you hatless, always
I have hidden my shabby cap from your sight.
You know your few words
Are scanned for weeks by quaking families
For sinister indications or even for hints of good fortune:
Is that why they are so cruel?
The great trapper is approaching.
There is a little door
Out of the trap into the open air. You
Have the key.
Will you throw it in to us?
2
Fear not, little man behind the desk!
Your superiors
<
br /> Will not give you grief if you give us the stamp.
During months of inquisition
You have examined the applicant through and through.
You know every hair on his head.
Not one letter of your rules and regulations
Have you overlooked. Not one single catch question
Have you omitted. Put an end to the torment now.
Slap us a little stamp on, your bosses
Won’t eat you up if you do.
At the sight of a severed tree root looking like a fallen man
Fallen. How should I rise up again?
A bit of rest would do me wonders now.
And I could wait with living till tomorrow
If I just knew my enemies were resting too!
And I saw fields greening . . .
And I saw fields greening. Saw the pear tree bending
Down to meet the corn, saw, saw the bright meadows
In the noonday light. And I heard voices
Hoarsely whisper: the fields stretch out defenceless.
And a cloud
The beam
See that beam on the hillside now
Sticking out of the ground, crooked and oh
Too thick, too thin, too long, too short.
Truth is, it was once thick enough
Thin enough, short and long enough
And with three others was a roof’s support.
The typhoon
Fleeing from the housepainter, making for the States
Suddenly we noticed our little ship lay still
One whole night and one whole day
She lay off Luzon in the China Sea.
Some said because of a typhoon raging in the north
Others were afraid of German pirate ships.
All
Preferred the typhoon to the Germans.
W.B.
Even just the change
Of the seasons
Recalled betimes
Would surely have restrained him
The sight of new faces
And old ones too
The advent of new thoughts
And new difficulties
To Walter Benjamin who, fleeing from Hitler, took his own life
At chess, sitting in the pear tree’s shade
Your favoured tactic was to wear the opponent down
The enemy who drove you from your books
Will not be worn down by the likes of us.
On the suicide of the refugee W.B.
I hear you have raised your hand against yourself
Anticipating the slaughterer.
Eight years banished, observing the rise of the enemy
Driven at last to a frontier that could not be crossed
You have, it is said, crossed over one that can.
Empires fall. Gang leaders
Stride around like statesmen. The peoples
Have become invisible under the armaments.
So the future lies in darkness and the forces of good
Are weak. You saw all that
When you destroyed your torturable body.
The losses
Fleeing the sinking ship, boarding another sinking
—Still none new is in sight—I note
On a scrap of paper the names
Of those who are no longer around me.
Little teacher from among the working people
MARGARETE STEFFIN. The course unfinished
Flight having exhausted her
Sickness wasted her, she died, the wise one.
So also left me the contradictor
Who knew so much, who was seeking for the new
WALTER BENJAMIN. At the uncrossable frontier
Weary of being pursued, he laid himself down.
He did not wake from his sleep.
And the constant glad-of-his-life
KARL KOCH, master in dispute
Eliminated himself in the stinking city of Rome, outwitting
The SS at the door.
And I hear nothing now from
KASPAR NEHER, the painter. Oh could I at least
Cross him off the list.
These death took. Others
Went from me into life’s hardship
Or luxury.
I asked myself: why talk to them?
I asked myself: why talk to them?
They buy knowledge to sell it.
They want to hear where there’s cheap knowledge
They can sell dear. Why
Should they want to know
What speaks against buying and selling?
They want to be victorious
They want to know nothing against the victory.
They don’t want to be oppressed
They want to oppress.
They don’t want progress
Only to get ahead.
They obey anyone
Who promises them they can give orders.
They sacrifice themselves
So that the sacrificial stone will remain.
What shall I say to them? I wondered. That
Is what I shall say to them, I decided.
Autumn in California
1
In my garden
There are only evergreens. If I want to see autumn
I drive to my friend’s house in the hills. There
I can stand for five minutes and see a tree
Robbed of its leaves and leaves robbed of their trunk.
2
I saw a big autumn leaf that the wind
Was blowing along the street and I thought: difficult
To calculate the future course of that leaf.
Thinking about Hell . . .
Thinking about Hell, my brother Shelley, so I hear
Supposed it to be a city much like London. I
Who live not in London but in Los Angeles
Thinking about Hell, suppose it must be
Even more like Los Angeles.
In Hell too
I do not doubt there are such luxuriant gardens
With flowers, as big as trees, that admittedly perish at once
Unless watered with very expensive water. And fruit markets
With heaps of fruit that, it must be said
Have neither smell nor taste. And the endless columns of cars
Lighter than their own shadows, swifter than
Foolish thoughts, gleaming vehicles in which
Rosy people coming from nowhere are going nowhere
And houses, built for the happy and therefore empty
Even when lived in.
Not all the houses even in Hell are ugly.
But the fear of being flung out on the street
Consumes the dwellers in villas no less than
The dwellers in the shanties.
Sonnet of an emigrant
Hounded from my land now I must seek here
Some new place where they buy and sell and drink
And I can try to sell them what I think
And I must go the old ways now that are
The ways long trodden smooth by hopeless feet.
Already going, I still don’t know: to whom?
Wherever I come they tell me: spell your name!
Alas, this name was once among the great.
I should be glad they don’t know who he is
Who arrives like one with a warrant out for him.
I doubt they’re desperate for my services
I have had dealings with their kind already
May well be there’s a suspicion among them
I’d not serve them any better than they’d serve me.
I am the god of fortune . . .
I am the god of fortune, heretics gather round
I’m after happiness in this vale of tears
I’m agitator, dirt-digger, rabble-rouser
There’s a price, shut the door, on my head if I’m found.
In view of the circumstances in this city
/> 1
In view of the circumstances in this city
I conduct myself so:
When I enter anywhere I say my name and show
The papers that establish it with stamps that
Cannot be forged.
When I say something I call witnesses for whose trustworthiness
I have testimonies.
When I am silent I give my face
An empty expression, so people can see:
I am not thinking.
So
I permit no one to believe me. I reject
Every confidence.
2
I do this because I know: the circumstances in this city
Make believing impossible.
3
Nonetheless it sometimes happens
When I’m distracted or preoccupied
That I am caught out and asked
If I am not a swindler, have not been lying, am not
Up to something.
And I
Always get confused, talk uncertainly, hush up
Everything that speaks for me, and instead
Am ashamed.
Red carnival
Before the great masked processions of the red carnival