by Tom Kuhn
Some of the great and good are here
(Honoured once, reviled now, for
Murdering Jews) and their cause is
The civil rights of minorities.
Former parliamentarians
Who in the Hitler years were Aryans
Offer themselves as lawyers now:
Good men and useful—let us through!
And the old black-marketeer
Says, if asked, I am marching here
For the flourishing (or ruin)
Of free and unfettered competition.
That brazen judge, to fan the flames,
Waves an old law, laughs, and deems
Himself and everyone else to be
Not guilty of anything Hitlery.
Artists, musicians, poetry primates
Screaming for laurels and the eats
All good chaps who swiftly now
Were never there and never knew.
Whiplash-cracks along the way:
The SS performing, if you pay
But they need freedom too, you see
Freedom and Democracy.
And the Nazi Women’s Union
Hitching up their skirts come on
With their browned legs angling to get
The arch-enemy’s chocolate.
Kraft-durch-Freude women, snoopers
Hacks and winter-charity helpers
Donations-taxes-debt-collectors
German-patrimony-annexers
In elective affinity
This blood and muck through Germany
Belched, puked, stank and yelled to see
Freedom and Democracy
And came at last in a noisome state
To the Isar’s banks, to the movement’s seat
Having laid already in that fair town
The foundation stone of Germany’s tomb
And where, alerted by the bulletins,
Starving among the skeletons
Of their domiciles the bourgeoisie
Stood around in perplexity.
And as this mephistic procession
Carried their placards through the place of ruin
On the steps of the Brown House appeared
Six figures and said not a word.
There the procession halted, there
The six figures bowed to those who bore
The placards with the old slogan
And joining them they all moved on.
These six party members rode
In six carriages through the crowd
Who cried, amidst the rubble, we
Want Freedom and Democracy.
First Oppression rode up
His bone hand gripping the knob of a whip
In an armoured cart he rode
A token of Industry’s gratitude.
In a rusted tank, applauded loudly
Pestilence rode, shamefacedly
Like an invalid tugging up high
Against the wind his brown necktie.
Behind him rode Deceit and he
Waved a tankard: the beer was free.
To swill it though and slake your thirst
You must sell him your children first.
Old as the hills Stupidity,
Still active, rode in that company
And as they progressed kept Deceit
Constantly within his sight.
Hanging an arm out Murder made
His appearance before the crowd.
Monster lolling in his carriage he
Sang the sweet dream of liberty
Pillage then brought up the rear
On his lap the terrestrial sphere.
He wore a junker-field marshal’s
Regimentals, with medals.
And all six of these eminences
Long-established, merciless
All as one they raised a plea
For Freedom and Democracy.
After these six plagues jolted
A vast conveyance of the dead
But who they were, none could make out:
A tribe, it seemed, none knew about.
Out of the ruins a wind sang them
All they had of a requiem
Who once had broken bread and slept
In houses here. Gross rats slipped
Fast from the warrens the bombs had smashed
After the troop, a myriad rushed
Squeaking: Freedom—oh let there be
Freedom and Democracy!
For the grave of Li Po
When I was alive we sat in the hollow of the park
Talking of this and that, but mostly of you.
You took me by the hand and led me to the temple in the wood
Where we made offerings, mostly for you.
In the evenings we sat by the fire
I fed you with plum cakes and you sang.
Later then we lay back, gazing at the moon
And I composed verses, mostly about you.
Came the first light of day and the cranes screeched
And on their long legs stepped out through the marshes.
We took tea under the cherry tree
Then the neighbours came, mostly to see you.
Now where I lie neither fire nor moon can reach me.
I cannot hear the cranes nor your singing anymore.
Do you not have a single rice cake you might bring me?
Eulenspiegel survives the War
For Werner Fink
When like a maggoty cadaver
The twelve-year Reich lay dead forever
Five-hundred-year-old Eulenspiegel
Appeared before the Swiss people
Large as life and for a fee
Of one hot dinner told how he
By telling jokes in terror lived
In great times and survived.
For the stand-up it was hard back then
To get a laugh from the SS men.
Eulenspiegel, we see in your face
Who is the stupidest in this place.
It was of course advisable
With the gags at times to be economical
Tighten your belt and dispense coolly
No more jokes than were absolutely
Needed to make a living from it
So that at worst the beast would spit
But would not bite. And whenever this
Great joker rich in kindness
Poor in honours described that so
Brief time it was as though
Many dead hands in ghostly fashion
Were still applauding him. Legion
Their name under the ash and rubble.
It was as if to him, the unbiddable
Awkward guest, in that great time
Wings and the gift of flying came
And on his wits and terrified
Like the common people he survived.
Antigone
Come out of the shadows and walk
Before us awhile
Friendly girl with the light step
Of one who has made up her mind, a terror
To the terrible.
Girl turning away, I know
You were afraid of dying but
Still more afraid
Of living unworthily.
You let the powerful off
Nothing and with those confusing the issue
You did no deals nor ever
Forgot an insult and over wrongdoing
There was no covering up.
We salute you!
Caspar Neher, the set designer, presents the elements of his Antigone-Model to the actors of the town of Chur
My friends, here, take, albeit not to keep
These laurel wreaths with leaves of leather black.
This one leaf in this one wreath here is loose
Don’t lose it—this one the seer picks.
To my friend, the painter
The water-fire-man of our youth
Insensitive to water and to fire
Has not stood the test:
the very wall
On which you painted him for me, fell
Victim to his elements.
To my friend, the painter (2)
The two broad panels
With the “evil Baal, the asocial one” and
The “scurfy old man, instructed by youth”
Are saved, in Sweden.
The plum song
That year as the plums were turning
From the north a horse and wain
Came to town one early morning
Driven by a fine young man.
As we gathered in the harvest
The stranger laid aside his hat
Stretched himself out in the meadow
Fell to watching this and that.
As we stewed the plums that summer
He was generous with his fun
Smiling stuck his purpled finger
In our saucepans one by one.
As we sat us down to eat them
He was long since up and gone
But, believe us, we could never
Quite forget that fine young man.
The friends
I, the playwright
Was separated by war from my friend, the set designer.
The cities in which we worked are no longer.
When I pass through the cities that do still stand
At times I say: that blue bit of laundry
My friend would have placed it better.
Sauna and sex
Fuck first, then bathe—that’s what I advise.
You wait till she bends down to take the bucket
Admire her naked arse before you fuck it
Then take her playfully between the thighs.
At first you have to hold her in position
Then she’ll sit on top and rub her quim
Along your cock until her juices swim.
But then, and in accordance with tradition
She’ll wait on you. She pours the boiling water
In generous splashes on the fizzing stones
She whips you sore with slender birch-tree switches
Till in the scalding steam your body twitches
And you refresh yourself just as you ought to
And sweat out all that fucking from your bones.
On the seduction of angels
Angels aren’t for ravishing—unless it’s quick.
Just drag him straight into the entrance hall
Shove your tongue right down his throat and stick
Your finger up him, turn him to the wall
And when he’s good and moist, lift up his gown
And fuck him. Should he groan as if in pain
Hold him hard, bring him on: once, and again—
That way he’ll lack the strength to strike you down.
Remind him that he has to move his bum
And tell him he can go ahead and touch
Your balls, that he must just let go and come
While earth and sky are slipping from his clutch—
And while you’re fucking don’t look on his face
And see his wings unruffled stay in place.
Berlin 1948
Through mountains of rubble
(Where the ministries used to be)
Five women are lugging a barrow
Full of bits of machinery.
When I came home again . . .
When I came home again
And saw what was left of the place
It filled me with fear
And I walked with a faster pace.
But walk as fast as I might
Fast as my fear was great
From such a site of ruin
I would never have come out.
Inscription on Liebknecht’s grave
Here lies
Karl Liebknecht
The fighter against war.
When he was murdered
Our city was still standing.
Inscription on Luxemburg’s tomb
Here lies buried
Rosa Luxemburg
A Jewess from Poland
Fighter in the avant-garde of German workers
Killed at the behest
Of German oppressors. You, the oppressed
Bury your differences.
The FDJ’s Song of rebuilding
No one wants to labour but we know
Grey’s the sign that morning won’t be long
Never mind the hunger, cold and sorrow
Where the work is, that’s where we belong.
Clear the rubble away
Build a new thing there
We ourselves must show ourselves the way
Come and tell us different if you dare.
Everybody wants a house and home
And building them is what we mean to do
But by ourselves and for ourselves this time
Building, then, we build the new state too.
Clear the rubble away
Build a new thing there
We ourselves must show ourselves the way
Come and tell us different if you dare.
And the gang of pushers who’re still with us
Bleating about freedom day and night
And the gentlemen who push the pushers
We shall push and shove them from our state.
Clear the rubble away
Build a new thing there
We ourselves must show ourselves the way
Come and tell us different if you dare.
For the house has gone but not the vermin
Junkers, potentates, entrepreneurs
Fetch your shovels, boys, shovel them squirming
From this state of ours and give three cheers!
Clear the rubble away
Build a new thing there
We ourselves must show ourselves the way
Come and tell us different if you dare.
Better than being moved is we get moving
And want no Führer telling us where to
Finally we’re the leaders and we’re moving
The old state out and leading in the new.
Clear the rubble away
Build a new thing there
We ourselves must show ourselves the way
Come and tell us different if you dare.
Song of the future
Once throughout the realm of Russia
There were high and mighty tsars
Trampling with impunity
The workers and the peasantry
Feasting full on each and every
Gallic cock that ever crowed
And the blood of good men flowed
None of this bothered the tsars.
But then one day things were otherwise
At an end were a thousand years of wanting bread
Out of misery
Over the granary rose
A flag of wonder and the flag was red.
And in Poland formerly
Great lords sat and they were rich and proud
And they undertook great wars
Fought with tanks and armoured cars
But won no victories, instead
Brought about Poland’s demise
And the peasants dragged the ploughs
And the ploughs were made of wood.
But then one day things were otherwise
At an end were a thousand years of wanting bread
Out of misery
Over the granary rose
A flag of wonder and the flag was red.
Fat traders once in distant China
Had an army all their own
So it was the fat men idled
While the hungry toiled
And four hundred million, thanks to these
Thousand rats, were skin and bone
For the fat traders
Had fat friends overseas.
But then one day things were otherwise
At an end were a thousand years of wanting bread
Out of misery
> Over the granary rose
A flag of wonder and the flag was red.
When we marched against the East
We the conquered by our masters
We the hired against our brothers
Who then in the Caucasus
With their tanks and wagons smashed us
Those who did not die there, hunger
And already we have new masters
Dragging us into yet more war.
But this day now things are otherwise
At an end are the thousand years of wanting bread
Out of misery
Over the granary flies
A flag of wonder and the flag is red.
Few words
To be set
Into the walls of the fortresses
May they tumble!
Jews
A slight shudder.
Someone’s walking over my grave.
Unless I am forced to . . .
Unless I am forced to
I will never praise a powerful man.
If you hear me praising a powerful man
I have been forced to.
The Führer will tell you . . .
The Führer will tell you: the war
Will last four weeks. Come autumn
You will be home. But
Autumn will come and go
And come and go again, many times, and you