by Tom Kuhn
Teddy’s song
Teddy says why should she play so hard to get?
She’d rather have another kiss and that is that.
Believe it who can
And wants to, gentlemen!
Say no more. Blessed are the believers.
Teddy says of intimacies, were they out in the open
Everyone would see her and there’d be no harm in them then.
Believe it who can
And wants to, gentlemen.
Say no more. Blessed are the believers.
Song of the cloud in the night
My heart is as drear as the cloud in the night
And has no home, oh you!
The cloud in the sky over field and tree
That do not know
What use so much space might be.
My heart is as wild as the cloud in the night
And full of longing, oh you!
She wants to be the whole wide sky
And why? Doesn’t she know?
To be alone with the wind, that’s why.
A martyr has his say
1
I, for example, play billiards in the attic
Where the washing gets hung up to dry and pisses
My mother says every day, It is tragic
That a grown man should be like that and that he says
2
Such things when such things would never enter another man’s head
Seeing the washing, there’s something wrong with him, a pornographer does things like that
But I’ve had quite enough of this not calling a spade a spade
And I say to my mother, What can I do about it if the washing’s like that?
3
Then she says, Filth like that in your mouth, what kind of creature . . . ?
And I say, It’s not in my mouth and anyway
To the pure all things are pure. Passing water
Is natural, every dog does it and every dog should have his day.
4
But then of course she’s in tears and says, The washing! And I’ll be the death of her
And the day will come when I’ll be on hands and knees trying to dig her up again
But it will be too late then and I’ll realize what a mother
I had in her but I should have thought of that long before then.
5
All a man can do when that’s the sort of weapon they use against him
Is go away and swallow his bile and smoke till he’s back in good spirits
But they certainly shouldn’t put, Tell the truth! in the catechism
If you’re not allowed to tell it like it is.
Wedekind’s funeral
In top hats cluelessly, like distraught crows
Over an eagle’s corpse, they stood around.
And though they (sweating tears) did their utmost
They could not get that joker underground.
The siblings-tree
In the dip by a river, deep, where hazel and alder housed
They were rocked in a trembling peace by scarcely perceptible breezes
The stormwind that sometimes howled
Dreadfully overhead never came down so deep.
Nor did they ever hear the river—because its roaring was ceaseless . . .
So long as they clutched fast in the undergrowth below
They had the same enemies and the same friends.
They said to one another: I.
They were joined in one trunk and grew
Together as siblings do.
And they yearned, knowing nothing about up there
Always upwards, where sun shone.
And when up there they had torn themselves apart from one another
And said to one another, more remotely: You
In danger they were often one trunk again—
But in later years at their highest up there
They grew together again.
In the years of their striving away from one another
Deep in the earth the fighting of the roots began.
They had their own, but often shuddered together
When in their deep travels something foreign
Beset them hard out of the other’s roots that were
Like them only fighting against dying—
But meanwhile up there they were blossoming in sunny peace and quiet:
Up there they felt of one another only
The cheerful festive movements of their crowns
And they sang to one another softly.
They never saw. But secretly they did feel
The wind and the dark air and the light
With a thousand fingers. Storms were a lashing of a host of clouds.
Pushed together trembling into the dark, they lifted their faces
Wet with tears, in a blessed light they felt June’s wild ecstasies.
They did not see the stars:
They felt them. And so knew of them. The sky
Was a wonderfully dark hole
Into which, with joy, they were able to grow:
And thus out of a musty pit they grew high
Into the air that was full of the sun
And beckoned them on.
In the struggle on the dark ground where, to rise
They must tear out the trunks of others, throttle roots, stamp undergrowth down
Both lost their innocence and the graceful pose
Of one who in piety leans on others.
They liked fighting. It was bliss to scrabble higher
And, laughing, to hear the one defeated groan
And on the dark ground below how he crawls and suffers
While you yourself in the light you have fought for and won
Spread your branches wider and breathe deep and free.
They became estranged in concerns that were more and more only their own
They fought themselves speechless through many an endless winter
At first knowing nothing of spring and quite unseen
They feared it was height that was cold and that would make you die . . .
And even later having fought through many a year
They discovered new delights and new dangers:
The deadly chill of frosty early mornings in spring—The rain
They had long thirsted for and which then so thoroughly soaked them
They almost drowned—the hail that shredded their blossom—
Thunderstorms that crushed all the branches fearfully together—
Winds that savaged their leaves—but most of all the gales
The gales that early in the year so bent them down that crazed
And senseless with fear they couldn’t get breath and under the black skies
Felt with a groaning whether their hips would hold, the gales
That for hours on end sought to rip them out of the earth, these
Soon reunited them who had often fought if the sun
Was warmer on one side than another
Or if a hole in the growth that blocked all the sky was big enough only for one
In such nights of storm they prayed together:
In this danger they felt they had roots in common
Which must hold them both. And hold they did . . .
Oh the feeling they might have to die all alone!
The stormwind drove them together. They kissed
Trembling and clung closer and felt further joy that truly
High above they were only one body . . .
And up there on still evenings they were cradled in peace
The winds tasted good, they were beckoned by the space
Then, trembling, they bowed their two crowns
And high in that space, as siblings
Bowed down to one another, trembling.
He was employed in the Institute . . .
He was employed in the Institute
In the cold down below
Cleaning the blood off the corpses<
br />
For the oven: In you go!
No warmth came from this oven
But an ice cold, fit to freeze.
The guts were frozen stiff:
Dissect them sweet as you please!
Love song
A man needs schnapps to look upon
Your body’s wondrous qualities
Or else he’ll stagger, overcome
By sudden weakness of the knees.
Oh you, and when the wind blows over
The bushes and lifts up your gown
A man must tear the flimsy cover
And press his knees between your own.
The darkening evening sky is wrapped
In alcoholic violet-red
The while your shirted body’s apt
For ravishing in a wide, white bed.
It isn’t just the drink that makes
The meadow sway between your knees
The sky sinks low and gently shakes
Us, the bushes and the trees.
Your pliant knees begin to rock
My wild heart to peace and stillness
As we ’twixt earth and heaven rock
Down to hell in easeful fullness.
Oh the unheard-of possibilities . . .
1
Oh the unheard-of possibilities
When you grasp a woman round the hips
Gently then, between her thighs
Down the green sea-slopes of pleasure slip.
2
Or drink brandy in some filthy dive
Bawling speeches high into the sky
Drunk, you love them one and all, you rave
Singing fall to earth and there you lie.
3
Oh I don’t say only in the stews
Have I been rapt away by ecstasies
Once I used to like sitting in pews
Where the blessing flung me to the skies.
4
On the wild carousels of evening too
Where like mad for next to nothing you can swing
It was bliss for me to fling myself into
Bright heaven whose radiance costs next to nothing.
5
And in the grass too, idle, heavy as iron
When the only thing you have to ponder is
Why by grasses does your naked flesh get bitten
The life-enjoyment then is serious.
6
In beds also, tangled in a woman
Between her slim legs measuring his length
How he breathes then, friends! And smiles when
He stretches, to enlarge his strength.
7
But what orange-coloured blisses
Naked heaven holds for the man who can
Ride aloft in the tall trees’ branches
And seize the wind the way he does women.
8
Or when senseless on your back you’re pulled
Wherever the swirling river will so you
Suppose that you are flying in the blue
Vast sky and clouds are circling you
And you, the gentle dove, are cradled.
9
But look, my friends, as we know very well
All that’s a brazen swindle and will stop
But this also: even at the best we’ll still
Go down below one day and won’t come up.
10
What we can have of the wind, blue sky and fellow humans
Will not feed even the smallest appetite
And what there is, it only goes to cretins
And isn’t enough and quickly turns to shite.
11
But who won’t seize on you with oaths and murder
In his pure hands has nothing, so says Baal—
For you will die before it’s lost its flavour
And you will die before your last ordeal.
However that may be, there was a time . . .
All the girls, I’ve long since forgotten them
Yet I remember they were once good to kiss
Just of her, only her, my most beloved
Not even this.
Ditty
When I rode the enchanting carousel
With the children, like them, but more so
When in the nights when all was visible
Under the moon in heaven I sang of blue
Many people stood around me laughing
And they said, just as my mother does:
He’s a different sort, a different sort of person
A completely different sort of human being from us.
When I sit among the posher lot
And tell them what till then they did not know
The way they look at me, it makes me sweat
And sweat’s a thing the posher lot don’t do
And they sit around me laughing
And they say, just as my mother does:
He’s a different sort, a different sort of person
A completely different sort of human being from us.
When I arrive in God the Father’s heaven
And I surely will, you wait and see
All the saints and pious men and women
Will say, Now we have full felicity
And they’ll all be looking at me and laughing
And they’ll say, just as my mother does:
He’s a different sort, a different sort of person
A completely different sort of human being from us.
Song for Herr Münsterer
Beneath his gaze so pure there leered
A hint of his damnation.
From a frayed lapel obscenely peered,
Smelling of death, a white carnation.
Golden hair, it was said,
Meant so much more than a lofty brow;
But he never deflowered a maid
Under fifteen years or so.
So long as that worked life was a spree:
His bluish blood saw to that.
He’d doff for every pretty tree
His (peculiarly scruffy) hat.
The glove he wore of finest grey
Was elegantly grand:
Only beasts and beauties—they
Felt his naked hand.
Psalm 2
No one knows anything for certain.
They eat and drink. They sleep and they give birth.
Their offspring are always only mortal.
Only sometimes do they know that all things pass.
When they are happy
They know: it will pass like the wind in spring.
No one knows will he be allowed to live forever.
When they are tired
They know: the wind will blow forever.
No one knows will he be obliged to live forever
No one knows anything for certain
And if in the morning he built himself shining houses
To live in them in the evening
He does not know
Whether in the evening he might not go silently away
Go in speechless with amazement
And not know what for
And not know of any street
And not know how long
No one knows anything at all for certain.
Dance song
Dance, oh dance—in the scant time left
Prance all you can on the dancing floor.
Your feet will soon be too heavy to lift
And a wilted wreath will fall from your thinning hair.
Dance! Dance!—Let your heart leap up!
Make the ground too hot for the soles of your feet!
Nobody knows when the fiddle will stop
And the fiddler drop to the floor dead beat.
Dance, oh dance—this night will not last.
Eyes that shine in the tipsy dance
When dawn looks in at the window aghast
Those eyes, dead-tired, lose their brilliance.
Dance! Dance! Outstare the light!
Light u
pon light till it all goes black!
Who knows when they’ll shut you in the earth out of sight?
Death can tie my hands when they’re slack.
Dance, oh dance!—while the red lamps burn
And your young heart still beats against mine
Grey Death squats outside for his turn
And there in the door stands his brother: Pain.
Nobody can have too much dancing and kissing.
No one should save, none should put by—
Who knows when we shall join the missing?
Who knows when we must die?
I, Berthold Brecht . . .
1
I, Berthold Brecht, just turned twenty
Brown of hair and weak of eye
Born in Augsburg on the river
Not so much cheeky, rather shy,
I, who’ve never had to beg
Of life who’ve felt but little pain
Been coddled like a new-laid egg
Notwithstanding, I complain.
2
There’s no point getting cross about it:
Sometimes a man must have relief.
Just sign your names and while you’re at it
Give me benediction, not grief.
And as there isn’t—more’s the pity—
I’ll start by getting this off my chest:
That there’s no qualified authority
To whom one properly should protest.
3
As long ago a poor stray sinner
Born in Paris of parents crust-less
Wrote in the unfeeling winds
His bitter song of life’s injustice
