The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht

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The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht Page 3

by Tom Kuhn


  We saw the red steep flames

  Striking up through smoke into the black sky.

  In the fields there in a close stillness

  Crackling

  A tree was burning.

  The shocked stricken branches reached up high

  Black, danced around wildly

  Crazily by a red rain of sparks.

  Waves of the tide of fire broke through the fog.

  Crazy dry leaves, terrifying, danced

  In jubilation, free, and blackened

  In mockery around the old trunk.

  But grand and motionless shining into the night

  Like an old warrior, tired, dead tired

  But regal in his distress

  The burning tree stood.

  And suddenly flings up its black stricken branches

  And the crimson flame sweeps up the height of it—

  A while it stands tall in the black sky

  Then the trunk, in a red dance of sparks

  Cracks and collapses.

  The fool

  Has a face like snow, so white

  And cracked like a wall of rock.

  And through his eyes’ troubled look

  Shows an extinguished light.

  His features are as stiff as wood . . .

  So he sits in a corner, the fool, alone. – – –

  He has the eyes of a child, so good

  And there’s an odd misfit between

  Their extinguished former fire

  And their dull distraction now. – – –

  And his face has a dead man’s stare . . .

  His mother died today and he

  The poor fool must sit there

  Grieving in motley. – – –

  Ash Wednesday

  The town lies grey and the red of dawn is dimming

  Softly through the streets in the half-light day is coming—

  Through the streets a cold shiver is coming this way

  And in the distance the bells are tolling heavily.

  They announce in muffled tribulation

  That the great Christ’s dying has begun.

  In one of the last grey little houses

  In the dawn’s dim light, in stillness

  Pierrot lies stiff and dead

  And a poor old woman is weeping by his bed.

  The forgotten

  They live somewhere, and where they die

  The place is alien

  And brutally life passes by

  And over them and on.

  They lived and died and fought their best

  And brought their children up

  And, far-forgotten, come at last

  In glory to a stop.

  Gethsemane

  And it happened in that night while the stars

  In the heavens wept and the Son

  Of God knelt amid the splendour of spectral flowers

  And in a strange key the airless breeze

  Sang in the park, that an angel floated from Heaven

  And wafted through the ancient grey trees

  To him whose soul was quaking in agony

  In a dialogue of prayer with God.

  And the Angel spoke, saying: See

  A thousand people wait

  Groaning in their need for your sacrifice. How could

  You watch them die disconsolate?

  For a long while he comforted the Christ:

  “All are waiting . . .”

  Then he rose up tall and strode away from him

  Through the night garden

  And saw the disciples asleep as he passed by them

  – – – All are waiting – – –

  His face darkened, and in haste

  And afraid he quitted the dreaming garden.

  Professor Sil Maria

  There’s an old story, rarely told

  Concerning a professor in Pia

  He gazed so hard at the stars he failed

  To watch over his wife and child

  Did Professor Sil Maria.

  Night after night he gazed at the stars

  And wrote in a thick book

  While in the bedroom all the hours

  Of every night his wife shed silent tears . . .

  And that was his bad luck.

  One night she ripped the book from him

  Fed it to the fire and angrily fled

  Into the dark and left S.M.

  The professor, the husband, alone with the grim

  Fact that he was dead.

  A modern legend

  Evening blew over the battlefield.

  The enemy had been overcome.

  The ringing telegraph wires filed

  The tidings home.

  Thereupon at one end of the world a cry

  Rose up and smashed on the dome of the sky

  Out of raving mouths a howling spilled

  And swelled to heaven, drunken, wild.

  Cursing, a thousand lips turned white

  A thousand hands clenched in savage hate.

  At the world’s other end then yells of joy

  Rose up and smashed on the dome of the sky

  Jubilation, ravings, furious glee

  They filled their lungs, they breathed free.

  A thousand lips squirmed in the old prayer

  A thousand hands folded, devout, secure.

  And the telegraph wires

  Sang through the night hours

  Of the dead who lay in the field where they dropped – – –

  And then among friend and foe it was quiet once more.

  – – – – – – – –

  Only the mothers wept

  Over here—over there.

  Hans Lody

  You died alone

  A lonely death on some grey dawn

  Those who wished you dead

  Walked with you, gave you your last bread.

  No song, no honour in your time of need.

  But it was for this your life is done:

  That one bright sunlit morn

  German songs shall ring out above your grave

  German flags in the golden light shall wave

  And German hands strew blossoms in the sun.

  Golden fruits hang . . .

  Golden fruits hang

  Into our hands. The girls

  Lure us in along

  The greenwood ways by their giggles.

  Through the bushes, nearer

  Your little red jacket shows up

  Like the red banner

  Of men marching in step.

  Wind rings in the dead

  Trees the hour of evening

  I kiss your red

  Mouth that is warm and living.

  The mother’s name

  A thing the nurses time after time relate

  Of severely wounded men

  Is that they become very quiet

  And children again.

  That all the lads who are sick and in pain

  Never forget the patient labour

  And for every least kindness shown

  Say thanks with strange fervour.

  And that quite without cause

  Tears will rise up in a man and he groans

  A name—and it is

  His mother he means.

  And indeed at the end as though

  All heaven were at their service as the light of life leaves them

  The dying call for their mothers to come

  No matter if the mothers died ten years ago . . .

  Legend of Holy Saturday

  Dedicated to the orphaned

  They took the crown

  Of thorns from his hair

  Laid him in the grave

  With not a prayer.

  When they came to the burial site

  The next night, harried and drawn

  Behold, on the grave

  Flowers had sprung from the thorn.

  And amongst the blossoms in the evening grey

  A wondrous noise: />
  A thrush picking its way

  Raising its bright voice.

  And it no longer seemed

  That death was even in that place.

  Lifted up over time and space

  They smiled as in a bright dream

  And went their ways.

  Belgian fields

  Murder, battles, villages in flames along the frontiers.

  And at night the red lights of fire shine

  Flickering and flaring into Belgium and are seen

  In the blank fields of the endlessly burgeoning land, as in mirrors.

  The artillery bellows and thunders

  Day and night all the quickening springtime long

  Thudding of guns and the tocsin’s clang

  Overrun the flowering graveyards of Old Flanders.

  When spring bubbles up out of the sea

  Over fields and roads and meadows and farms

  German soldiers come in busy swarms

  With juddering harrows

  And gouging ploughs

  They break and churn the opening clay

  And fling in handfuls

  From hands still hot and swollen from their rifle barrels

  Singing seed over the bridal earth.

  Day and night the plough dug fields and their ridges

  Roads, gardens and greens, through brushwood and quarry

  Sparing no footpaths or boundaries

  Compelled by the iron fist of Germany

  Day and night the plough dug deeper into the enemy’s earth.

  And in the ploughlands the corn showed through.

  While in the distance war

  Stamped, bellowed and blazed as before

  Out of the pit of buried rage there rose

  When clod and shoots were steaming in the summer haze

  Strongly the yield. From the bodies of the dead it drew

  Its strength. From rotting youth, from the earth’s bloody trough.

  Yes, the joined hands

  Of dead enemies and friends

  Raised, as a sacrifice, flowering

  Life for the sun’s blessing

  And out of the earth of God’s little acre the rotted dead

  Over the breathing land, spread

  Wide open into the sun,

  The victorious living were given the bread of heaven.

  Through the roaring nights the fires of war appear

  Over Belgium’s flowering acres like flickering ghosts in a mirror

  And by day from the heaving seas of corn, like echoes

  Of the din of the battles in France, to heaven rise

  Shot through with sun, the iron-heavy

  Songs of the victorious power of Germany

  That in the tilth of the dead

  Dug itself fields of bread.

  French peasants

  Always in the evening when the sky streams

  Red and tattered like a burning banner, a colossal sign,

  When they don’t know is it the red of sunset or villages in flames

  They hurry through the dark valleys, crouching down

  Creeping from the woods towards their villages and stand

  Bent forward on hilltops and look, look

  Where the rubbled homeland is going up in fire and smoke.

  Without end, the avenues of blackened and stiffening trees

  Climbing in flames delineate the familiar highways

  To those who cannot comprehend the wasted land.

  Empty and drab without end

  In the evening light, into the red sky grow

  Stony land, ploughland and meadow.

  Hour after hour after hour

  The peasants stand there in droves and stare

  Over the smoking farms, the woods, the sore furrows

  Over the lamenting fields and the lonely vigils

  Of the rafters of the trees.

  Not till the wind wafts towards them the humming of bells

  Not till night is shown

  By the lights in the pit of the enemy trenches

  Only then will the peasants with strangely stricken faces

  Bewildered, distraught, creep back down

  The valleys and into the woodland hiding places.

  Ballad of the dance

  In spring when the fair came round she danced

  As though the great storm were shaking out her soul into darkness . . .

  Big and strong like a red desire she danced

  While over dark fields the wind wheeled home in the night oblivious.

  But afterwards by some it was being said

  He had fallen at the front as the wind blew high

  And that dying he stretched himself out and was listening, dead

  To the winds of spring and died with a groan and still did not wish to die.

  She, however, went mad. And danced at the fairs for money. Danced

  Through the land down its roads and was always looking for—

  She didn’t know what. And danced . . . Laughed in her torment, danced.

  Listened, crazed, to the high wind of spring and searched on the dark roads and never found what she was looking for, I’m sure.

  A soldier’s grave

  Where the soldiers lie, down there

  My friend is lying too.

  I couldn’t find him out there.

  And what’s it matter now?

  He fought and sang in times past

  With all of them in a row

  He swung his sword with all the rest

  And now with all of them he’s lost

  And lies with them below.

  The evening wind blows where they lie

  And sings a song or two.

  Makes me sad. I don’t know why.

  And what’s it matter now?

  Bonnie Mac Sorel courted . . .

  Bonnie Mac Sorel courted

  The wild young black-haired Lou

  But she turned her shining face from him

  And her black pigtail too.

  Bonnie Mac Sorel, she knew him not

  And he waited many a year

  Till then in his anger the quiet girl Lee

  Was lovelier to him than Lou and the Virgin were.

  When Bonnie Mac after many a year

  Rode to church with the quiet Lee

  Away from the road through the grass proud Lou

  Kept them tearful company.

  And who it was neither Bonnie Mac

  Nor his young bride could say

  For she turned away her raddled white face

  And her hair was already grey.

  Bonnie Mac Sorel, he knew her not

  And she waited many a year

  And by then in her sorrow Bonnie Mac Sorel

  Was lovelier than God and the Devil to her.

  The men of the sea

  Bright times, hooray, the war has begun!

  Don’t you cry. Farewell. It has to be.

  We’ll still have your wind out there and your sun

  And soon we’ll be back again.

  So said the men of the sea.

  Leaving port, they sang like a choir, loud and bright

  Wives and children wept woefully.

  But they spied over the sunlit waves for the enemy fleet:

  Because you must be free.

  So said the men of the sea.

  Of the enemy three sank. But the last one bore

  Them down with him in the sea.

  But over the dark waves they spied for the sunny shore.

  And we’ll never be back again

  So said the men of the sea.

  They did not weep. They did not pray.

  Adieu, wind and sun! Adieu, home country!

  They died very quiet in the bright light of midday.

  Because you must be free.

  So said the men of the sea.

  Mothers of the missing

  Since death took his body, his name and his grief away

  They cease directing their lives
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  They cease their planning and thinking, they say

  Thanks for the junk that poverty in pity gives

  And are amazed like the blind from whom too suddenly

  In the midst of and lovingly embraced by the sunshine

  So strangely fast the sun went down.

  Living is a sin. Loving is sorrow.

  Forgetting is sweet. Remembering, lovely.

  And if they grow old and would be glad if they died today

  Today is too soon, far too soon, and so is tomorrow

  For his place must be kept. His place is ready.

  And if they grow old: he is young forever

  Many years, he still goes dressed as a soldier.

  And the years go by. He is not yet dead.

  He never will die. It is only that he’ll never come back.

  A coffee pot stays full and empty a chair.

  And they save him a bed and they save him bread

  And they pray for him and when they lack

  Always they entreat him to come home here.

  They ask and they speak—they scarcely listen.

  They look through windows but see nothing there.

  Did not see the clouds pass. Did not hear the wind roar.

  Were deaf when the rain ran, blind when they looked at the sun.

  But eyes that are old in a tired face become

  Radiant and young: they are thinking of him.

  And if they only believe and do not despair

 

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