by Tom Kuhn
5
But one day when I was washing my shirt in the hut she walked to the gate and looked at me and wanted to go out.
6
And the man who had beaten her till he was tired said: My angel—
7
And the man who had said: I love you, led her out and looked up into the air with a smile and praised the weather and gave her his hand.
8
Then because she was outside in the air and it grew desolate in the hut he shut the gate and sat himself down behind the newspaper.
9
I haven’t seen her since and all that remained of her was the little shout she gave when she came back to the gate in the morning and it was already shut.
10
Now the hut has rotted and my breast is stuffed with newspaper and in the evenings I lie by the river in the dark heart of the bushes and remember.
11
The wind has a grassy smell in its hair and the water cries unceasingly to God for peace and I have a bitter taste on my tongue.
12th Psalm
1
I have eaten grass, yes I have, and taken my friend Orge at his word, I swear, I have stolen I don’t deny it. But I did not take her body, I couldn’t.
2
I’m not a black, I don’t say that out of modesty, but I diligently carry out my duties. But our bodies lay together between the sheets and I bit her in the throat and fell asleep.
3
Because in her blood she had dark auto-da-fés, lanterns and nigger dances and the weariness of many highways: but I was a little idiot.
4
Fat animals crept through the brown boles of the jungle around us, blue rain thundered in the plane-tree roofs and we lay like gentle plants.
5
That was Heh, the dark-skinned, she died like a cloud that has almost never been.
Song of the catacombs. 13th Psalm
1
Formerly they squatted on my hut like flies, adorned with sores, swanking with pus, for I said to them whenever I went out: Be patient and I’ll content you.
2
Now under the hut in the black earth I have whitewashed chambers in which I bury them all wrapped in cloths, I suffocate them by proximity with corpses, I can forget about them.
3
No, I haven’t killed anybody, I shouldn’t like to. They all committed suicide and I buried them before they stank. One ran suppurating into the sunlight and there he died. Another lay down in my bed with his sores and suffocated in it. A woman went out, a bolt on the door was a reminder of her and a grave awaits her in the catacombs when she returns.
4
Slowly the sleeping-space is filling up. The air is free of enthusiasm and bitterness. Speech is forbidden.
5
The chambers are growing alarmingly, they are already bigger than my hut above them in which I live and consider the grass, whether it is growing, and the sky, whether it is raining, for then I will strip myself naked.
Song of the summer. 14th Psalm
1
Under a yellow ochre sun that rises at 4, under a welter of wind that you can’t buy up for seven million, the meadows from Kempten to Passau unfold their propaganda for the joy of life.
2
The railway trains roll from city to city, full of milk and passengers, the cornfields open before them like the yellow sea. Around the trains, between the great growths of stone, time stands still, noon over the motionless fields.
3
The figures in the fields, brown in white shirts, blasphemous faces, rip open the flanks of the patient earth with bare shovels and pour a slurry of animal dung into the wounds. The brown-chested and their beasts labour as if possessed in slow movements for the palefaces in the growths of stone, as prescribed.
4a
Scarlet winds excite the plains. At the start of May the smells exceed all measure. In monstrous visions naked men are seen, baring their teeth and heading south at high altitudes.
4b
For the first time the red blood of humans gives birth to screams which are similar to the screams apes make before they end. Rattling swarms of locusts cover our brains with green, we swell up in our heads and grow seven times as many limbs.
4
God created the earth to bring forth bread and gave us stones for our houses and arms for work, so that the bellies should be filled, and gave us bellies to digest the food we eat. But what is the wind there for, splendid in the leafy treetops?
5
The wind pushes the clouds so that there will be rain for the fields so that the fields will give us bread. Let us now get children in all manner of delights, for the bread, and in case we die.
6
Summer is the loveliest season (apart from spring, winter and autumn! While it lasts, I love it best.)
Song of myself. 16th Psalm
1
My skin is hanging off me in tatters, my body is as thin as a grasshopper’s, I’m like a black in my white shirt which I wear to entice the white women. I have lain in warm mires like a hazel wand. I tell you: I am good in bed.
2
I play the guitar and under my big hands the strings’ pre-history awakes: they are the guts of beasts, the guitar sings in the manner of a beast, it is a large animal that hangs on my body like a tick and yells melodiously when I throttle it. I sing little songs to it that I pluck from the trees in the morning.
4
I have a relationship with the sky, I call him Azurl, splendid, violet, he loves me. It is a love between men.
6
But I dance like the blacks around the copper sun and torment my animal-guts and imitate the shrieking of the fields and the sighing of cows being serviced.
7
My children are as white as milk, nothing frightening about them, they have big eyes and big hands, they swig milk like young lambs and scream like raptors—guaranteed!
Train journey. 19th Psalm
1
In the gliding train between glass windows in the country sits a gentle Red Indian: me.
2
All summer he is to be seen in the railway trains, on the flatlands among gossiping women and palefaces smoking, and his eyes are on the meadows.
3
I do no work at all in summer, I travel around and run into the country, but by September my face is a landscape and I am calmer than at any other time of the year.
4
From the woods I take silence with me. But from the meadows the lift, and serenity from the fields that grow under the sickle for November nights
5
in the cherry brandy bar.
The 1st Psalm
1
How terrifying at night is the convex face of the black land!
2
Above the world are the clouds, they belong to the world. Above the clouds there is nothing.
3
The solitary tree in the stony field must have the feeling that everything is in vain.
It has never seen a tree. There are no trees.
4
I always think: we are not being watched.
The leprous look of the only star in the night, before it falls!
5
The warm wind—a catholic—still labours after connections.
6
I seem very isolated. I have no patience.
Our poor brother That’s All said of the world: it doesn’t matter.
7
We are travelling at great speed towards a star in the Milky Way. There is a great calm on the face of the earth. My heart goes too fast. Otherwise everything is as it should be.
The 2nd Psalm
1
Under a flesh-coloured sun which four breaths after midnight brightens the eastern sky, under a welter of wind that covers it in gusts as though with bedclothes, the meadows from Füssen to Passau unfold their propaganda for the love of life.
2
From time to time the railway trains ful
l of milk and passengers divide the cornfield seas; they thunder through, but the air stands still around them, the light between the great growths of stone, noon over the motionless fields.
3
The figures in the fields, blasphemous visages, they labour with slow movements for the palefaces in the growths of stone, as prescribed.
4
For God created the earth to bring forth bread, and gave us brown-chested men so that it should reach our bellies mixed with the milk of the cows which he created. But what is the wind there for, splendid in the treetops?
5
The wind makes the clouds so that there shall be rain on the fields and bread will come forth. Let us get children in our lust for bread, that it shall be devoured.
6
That is summer. Scarlet winds excite the plains, at the end of June the smells exceed all measure. In monstrous visions naked men are seen, baring their teeth and heading south at high altitudes.
7
In the huts the light of the night is like salmon. We celebrate the resurrection of the flesh.
The 3rd Psalm
1
In July you fish my voice out of the ponds. There is brandy in my veins. My hand is flesh.
2
The pondwater tans my skin, I’m as hard as a hazel rod, I’d be good in bed, my loves.
3
In the red sun on the stones I love the guitars: they are the guts of beasts, the guitar sings in the manner of beasts, it devours little songs.
4
In July I have relations with the sky, I call him Azurl, splendid, violet, he loves me. It is a love between men.
5
He turns pale when I torment my animal-guts and imitate the fields’ red fornication and the sighing of cows being serviced.
The 4th Psalm
1
What else am I supposed to do?
I’ve played all the games of patience, spewed up all the schnapps
Stuffed all the books in the stove
Loved all the women till they stank like Leviathan.
I am already a great saint, my ears are so rotten any minute they’ll fall off.
So why no peace and quiet? Why are people still standing around in the yard like dustbins—waiting for stuff to be put into them?
I have let it be known they can no longer expect the Song of Songs from me.
I’ve set the police on the customers.
Whoever it is you’re looking for it isn’t me.
2
I’m the most practical of all my brothers—
And it’s my head it starts with!
My brothers were cruel, I am the cruellest—
And I’m the one who weeps at night!
3
With the tablets of the law the vices themselves were broken.
Sleep with your sister nowadays, there’s not much joy in it.
Murder, for many, is too much of an effort
And everyone is writing poetry.
Given the uncertainty of all things
Many prefer to tell the truth
Being ignorant of the peril.
The courtesans are salting down meat for the winter
And the Devil no longer hauls away his best people.
POEMS BELONGING WITH THE PSALMS
God’s vespers
When the blue wind of evening wakes God the Father he sees the sky above him turning pale and he enjoys it. At once his hearing is quickened by the great chorale of the cosmos and he gives himself up to it:
The screams of flooded forests as they drown
The groaning of old brown wooden houses when their burden of people and furniture becomes too heavy
The dry coughing of exhausted fields whose strength has been stolen from them
The gigantic bowel noises of the last mammoth bringing its hard and blissful life on earth to a close.
The anxious prayers of the mothers of great men
The bellowing of glaciers in the white Himalayas as they amuse themselves in their icy loneliness and the torment of Bert Brecht who is doing badly.
And at the same time: the crazy songs of the waters rising up in the forests.
The gentle breathing of sleeping humans rocked on ancient boards.
The ecstatic murmuring of cornfields, long prayer mills.
The great words of great men.
And the wonderful poems of Bert Brecht who is doing badly.
Psalm in spring
Now I’m watching out for summer, lads. We have gone shopping for rum and strung new guts on the guitar. White shirts have still to be worked for.
Our limbs grow like the grass in June and around the middle of August the virgins disappear. At this time bliss gets the upper hand.
Day by day the sky fills with a soft radiance and its nights rob you of your sleep.
Morning on Mount Ararat
1
Early, in that same night, I lifted myself out of her bed as though fouled by pigeons and sailed away. I proceeded cautiously, my friends, bow-leggedly, like a sloop before the wind under too much sail, I ran around dead tired like a little hedgehog, the remnants of a proud night.
2
When I came back, laden with the wind, she was still sleeping like a corpse on top of the bedclothes, the air hung blackly between the walls still steeped in the smell of love. I smoked a havana.
The offended party
Certainly: I went home at once.
All day long with his pale heavens he had offended me. But by evening he had filled up the measure of his iniquities. I went home.
I have realized: People do not like me. I can die like a dog, they’ll be drinking coffee. Behind my curtains I am superfluous.
I could no longer save myself, colossal black hounds rise up on every street corner.
The clouds wave me away, the heavenly concert will take place and I shall not be admitted.
The black water is still flowing under the bridge, I took a quick look down. The brass band was playing with puffed-out cheeks (there will be a good deal of coition this morning!), I thought, concerning the water: when they play, things are rather better.
With my shirt open on my chest and no prayers on my palate I am at the mercy of planet earth that within a system to which I never gave my blessing moves in cold space.
My mother has been dead since yesterday evening, her hands gradually went cold while she was still gasping but she said nothing more only stopped gasping.
My pulse is somewhat accelerated, I still see clearly, can walk, in the evening I
Uncollected Poems
1919–1924
Within this period Brecht’s mother died and he fathered three children by three different women. He was awarded the 1922 Kleist Prize for his first three dramas, Baal, Drums in the Night, and In the Jungle of the Cities. In June 1923 he heard Hitler speak at a rally in Munich, and in September 1924, after many visits to Berlin, he went there to live. The poems of these years are quite astonishingly abundant, various, and lively. The injunction is always: Live while you can, in the liveliest way. Brecht adopts many personae, speaks in many voices. His invented characters—Balaam Lai, Jeppe Karl, Mankeboddel Bol, and a dozen others—jostle along with God the Father, the Virgin Mary, the poet’s grandmother, his lovers, his rowdy gifted friends, the poor, the lonely, the deceived, the mad . . . And Brecht has poetic forms and tones of voice to embrace them all.
Full of innocence she lay . . .
Full of innocence she lay
On white, on pillows, blamelessly
Glorious. I sobbed to see her.
Thinking of it troubles me.
Over us the white cover
Over it, however, heaven
The wild, the blue, and it was heaven
Let desire loose. And then
She trembled and, so I believe
I felt my knees already swayed
But looking a long while at heaven
I saw: I’ll never be allowed.—
&
nbsp; This was heaven. But I saw
Clouds, white clouds, and they were fearful
Stormwind-driven through the wild
Night. But half-awake, half still
Sleeping she then smiling wrapped
Her arms around me helplessly
Weak and, with her, life, the kind
The warm, the blissful, pressed on me.
The days of all your bitternesses . . .
The days of all your bitternesses
Will soon be over now, my dear
Like those of our unheard-of kisses
Which all too soon have disappeared.
Soon life will give up all its substance
And death itself will lose its hurt
You’ll take the line of least resistance
And sleep in peace in the hallowed dirt.
Growing in the citron light . . .
Growing in the citron light of the early morning
Under the spreading roof of the house in the marketplace
Child among other children, she saw the years
Without star flights or iron destiny’s
Terrible shadows. But midday was
Hot and laborious. While her children
Deep in the shade of the spreading roof of the house in the marketplace
