by Tom Kuhn
Will not be home.
The housepainter will tell you: the machines
Will do it for us. Very few
Will have to die. But
You will die in your hundreds of thousands, nowhere
Ever before will so much dying have been seen.
When I hear that you are at the North Cape
And in India and in the Transvaal all I shall know is
Where your graves may be found one of these days.
Through shattered ribs . . .
Through shattered ribs breathing laboriously
In darkness, in the cold she lies
Hungry, vast, sexless.
It was on us, not England, they wrote finis
It was on us, not England, they wrote finis
Of us they made a heap of bones
And a rubble heap of our cities
The people live on . . .
The people live on
Eight slices of bread
In wet cellars
For ten they need
To labour like Hercules.
High into the skeletal houses
Wretches in rags
Climb for a bucket.
But Carthage fought three wars.
The city
When the second war had been fought and lost
The city was still standing.
The mighty decreed
A third war there.
We sixty pent in a barn . . .
We sixty pent in a barn they set fire to
Ash in the ashes where there should be grain, of you
The living, we ask anger now.
And now step out . . .
And now step out with that familiar lightness
Onto the old stage of the rubble city
Full of patience and adamant also
Showing what is right.
That which is foolish, with wisdom
That which is hateful, with friendliness
Of the house that collapsed
The erroneous plans.
But to the obdurate show
With some small hope
Your good face.
The rulers
And a day will come we shall no longer see them here
And finally the city will be habitable
Though home still only to the wind and snow and though it were
A heap of cold ash still and bloody rubble.
Through the ruins of Luisenstrasse . . .
Through the ruins of Luisenstrasse
Came a woman riding a bicycle
Over the handlebars she held a bunch of grapes
And ate as she pedalled. Seeing
Her appetite I too felt an appetite
And not just for grapes.
The guns are silent . . .
The guns are silent and the battle’s lost
And the youth of France lies on the bloody plain
From far off comes a terrifying sound:
The Gallic cock crows once, then again, then again.
Marshall, show us your hands
What is it you are hiding away?
For a miserable 800,000 francs
Marshall, you are selling your country.
A realization
When I came home
My hair was still not grey
And I was glad.
The difficulties of the mountains lie behind us
Before us lie the difficulties of the plains.
A new house
Returning after fifteen years in exile
I have moved into a beautiful house.
I have hung up my Noh masks and the scroll
Depicting the Doubter. Driving through the ruins
Every day I am mindful of the privileges
Which got me this house. I hope
It will not make me tolerant of the holes
So many thousands are housing in. There
Still lying on the cupboard with the manuscripts
Is my suitcase.
To my compatriots
You, the survivors in the dead cities
Have mercy on yourselves, now finally
Make no more wars, surely it is
More than enough of war you’ve had already.
I beg you: on your own poor selves have mercy.
Reach for the trowel, men, and not the knife
You’d sit you down in house and home today
Had you not been so set on living by the knife
And house and home’s a better deal, I’d say.
Reach for the trowel, I beg you, not the knife.
Children, so they will spare you further war
Beg mother and father to understand that you
Don’t want to house in ruins, say loud and clear
Don’t put us through what you yourselves went through.
Children, beg them: spare us further war!
Mothers, endurers, who by endurance give
Some longer life to war, I beg of you,
Don’t suffer it! So let your children live
Owing their lives and not their deaths to you.
Mothers, I beg you, let your children live!
To the producers and audience of The Lindbergh Flight
You are about to hear
The account of the first flight across the Atlantic
In May 1927. A young man
Made it. He triumphed
Over storm, ice and the greedy waters. Nevertheless
Let his name be expunged, for
Having found his way across the pathless waters
He got lost in the swamps of our cities. Storms and ice
Did not defeat him but his fellow humans
Did. A decade
Of fame and riches and this unhappy man
Showed Hitler’s butchers the way of flying
With lethal bombs. For that reason
Let his name be expunged. But you yourselves
Be warned: neither courage nor a knowledge
Of engines and sea-charts will raise the enemy of society
Among the heroes.
When the city lay dead . . .
When the city lay dead one of your sons
Great Mother, went back into the rubble
Excavated the workbench and constructed a roof.
Pulled nails out of charred rafters
Hammered them straight, drove them into the new
Scaffolding fitted together from the old planks.
Often, busily washing rusty gear wheels in the tin bath
He wiped his brow clean of the flies
That rose from what was dead.
When our cities lay in ruins . . .
When our cities lay in ruins
Laid waste by the slaughterman’s war
We began rebuilding them
In the cold, hungry and weak as we were.
We pulled the iron carts of rubble
Ourselves as in ancient times.
We dug out tiles with our bare hands
So as not to sell our children into servitude.
Then for these our children we made room
In the schools and cleaned the schools and cleansed
The knowledge and learning of the centuries
Of the old dirt, to make it good for them.
Finding a use for everything
In 1934, in the eighth year of the Civil War
The bourgeois regime’s aeroplanes
Dropped leaflets over the communist areas
Putting a price on the head of Mao Tse-tung.
Sensibly
Mao, the wanted man, in view of the shortage
Of paper and the abundance of ideas, had the sheets,
Which were printed only on one side, collected and put them
Printed on the blank sides with useful things
Into circulation among the people.
Except this star, there is nothing . . .
Except this star there is nothing, I thought, and it
Is a
wasteland.
It is our only refuge and this
Is what it looks like.
German song
When the hard rain of bombs had rubbled your cities
Tell us: what was it like, the time that followed?
It was a time in which we sorrowed
And after it came the time of the builders of our cities.
When your fields had been laid waste by the monstrous treads of war
Tell us: what was it like, the time that followed?
It was a time in which we sorrowed
And then we built ourselves barns that were bigger than we had before.
Now that you are wretched, defeated, broken by world conquest
Tell us: why do you rejoice?
Because now we see coming our time of peace
We have driven out our rulers at long last.
Youth
And I sat with them in the ruins of their houses
And I heard them talking and they said: enough is enough
Finally enough of learning what we can’t make any sense of.
We want deeds! And swiftly! By violence changing everything.
They who, trusting, learned things that were wrong now, untrusting
Heard things that are right, for none knew how to test what they were hearing.
But their empty stomachs devoured much of the talk.
Bad times
The tree explains why it has borne no fruit.
The poet explains why his verses have turned out bad.
The general explains why the war was lost.
Pictures painted on frail canvasses!
The expedition’s records handed down to the forgetful!
Good conduct observed by nobody!
Shall the cracked vase be used as a pisspot?
Shall the ridiculous tragedy be turned into a farce?
Shall the disfigured beloved be set to work in the kitchen?
Praise be to those who quit the ruinous houses!
Praise be to those who lock the door against the dissolute friend!
Praise be to those who forget the unworkable plan!
The house was built of the stones that were available.
The revolution was made with the revolutionaries who were available.
The picture was painted with the colours that were available.
We ate what was there.
We gave to the needy.
We spoke with those present.
We worked with the strengths, the wisdom and the courage that were at our disposal.
Carelessness is not to be excused.
More would have been possible.
We express regret.
(What good would it do?)
Wandering this way and that . . .
Wandering this way and that
Kept no note of my hither and thither
Don’t know where I left my hat
Nor the previous seven either.
Sit down to eat
Sit down to eat. After all, you laid the table.
From today she who sewed the dress will also wear it.
Midday today
The Golden Age begins.
We began it because you mentioned
You were tired of building houses
You will not live in. We believe
Now you wish to eat the bread you baked.
Mother, your son shall eat.
The war has been cancelled. We thought
You’d be glad about that. Why, we asked ourselves
Postpone the Golden Age any longer?
We don’t live forever.
Last night I saw the Great Hag . . .
Last night I saw the Great Hag. She was sitting in a tank before an organ and playing Bach. And the tank was rolling towards me.
And her countenance shone with the light of inner visions and she knew nothing of the town of Auschwitz.
Her bosom was high, stuffed with bundles of banknotes, gifts from her lofty patrons. It rose and fell.
Near at hand stood a glass of crocodile tears got on the black market and from time to time she shook a few drops down between her breasts.
Oh how I saw them once . . .
Oh how I saw them once, new in the world as I was then
New they were to be, oh joyful times of beginning!
White the sheet, and the pen drafting in detail and large!
First bold line in a nothing, through nothing then climbing to all!
Digging foundations, and digging them deep—to build high.
Seeing what was never yet seen, the trying out of the new!
And I observed a race . . .
And I observed a race, clever enough to build towers
High in the sunlight, like no other race, and living in caves.
Knew how to nourish the earth to bring forth double the fruits
But fed on the bark of trees and not sufficient of that.
The heavens for them were the place where the squadrons of bombers
Appeared, bringing death, and rose like the tides of the ocean though
Not so punctually, for this was their nature, though not understood.
Again, as in former ages, the never predictable weather,
Drought and flood, decided the yield of the crops that nourish us all.
But not wholly: recurring in terrible cycles
Corn went into the fire, beans went into the water.
And since so much that occurred exceeded the usual reckoning
The old gods rose up again from the dark primordial days
In formulae to move mountains and to alter the courses of rivers.
Also I saw a city . . .
Also I saw a city destroyed by hastening waters
The flood ebbed away and the dwellers in that place gathered
To shovel out the mud from the choked and bursting homes
And were building new, I saw it with joy and following
The course of the mud and the river, everywhere lively with hammering
And songs, I came to a shattered dam and flattening this, so I learned
The hastening waters of a lake in the mountains had fallen
Over the city.
If all the smoke in the world
If all the smoke in the world
That rises from the roofs of the cottages
The factories and the tenement blocks
Ever came together as one
It would darken the sky
If the hands of all those in the world
Who light the fires in the hearths
Ever came together as one
It would light up the world
To the actor P.L. in exile
Hear us, we are calling you back. Driven out
Now you must return. From the land
That once flowed with milk and honey
You are driven out. You are called back
Into the land that has been destroyed.
And we can offer you nothing
But that you are needed.
Rich or poor
Healthy or sick
Forget it all
And come.
American airmen
Come quick, little sister
And let your dolls lie!
Run, run, see how lovely
Up there in the sky!
We’ll lie on our backs
And watch the American airmen
High above our fields
Silvery on the dome of heaven.
Mother, I’m hungry.
How long till tea?
Why am I so hungry
Mother, can you tell me?
On heaven’s dome silvery
The Americans are flying:
In the fields of Germany
Colorado beetles are thriving.
Kite song
Little kite, riding the air
Busily ascend the breezes!
Little blue thing, soar, soar
Over the chasms of our hous
es.
If we hold you on the string
In the air you will continue
Master of the seven winds
Forcing them to lift you.
We lie at your feet. Ride high
Small ancestor of our
Great airliners! Sharing the sky
Wave to them passing over.
One thing not like another
In the Easter garden
The bushes are leafing
But still by the water
The poplars are waiting.
A cloud over there
Is in a hurry
But a white one here
Wishes to tarry.
Brother and sister
Are washing the dishes
Slowly the brother
Faster the sister.
Not so employable
Fatty is still
Sitting at the table
Eating his fill.
Once there was a mother . . .
Once there was a mother