The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht
Page 36
When the Reichstag burned that day.
15
So why did you, Mr President
Send your guards off into town?
On the very selfsame Monday
When your Reichstag burned down
16
If we could call him to the hearing
There’d be much he could not refute
But you can’t cross-question Göring
He’s the one who prosecutes.
17
With no proper legal process
Very soon the judgement came
Mr Göring’s diagnosis:
The Communists were to blame
18
And that night in bloody February
Early, before the light of dawn
Anyone who’d ever been a Communist.
Was locked up or else gunned down.
19
In ancient days when Emperor Nero
Took it out on Christian folk
He set the city of Rome on fire, oh
And it sank in ash and smoke.
20
And that’s how old Emperor Nero
Established Christian guilt’s the rule
And a certain Mr Göro
Had learned all that at school.
21
In Berlin that winter’s evening
1933 the year
And before you could say “Hermann”
The Reichstag was on fire.
22
’Twas a man called Oberfohren
Was the first to sing this song
But before he’d hardly started
They came and shot him down.
When I was driven into exile
When I was driven into exile
The housepainter’s newspapers said
It was because in a poem I had
Sneered at the soldiers of the World War.
In truth, in the penultimate year of that war
When the regime, in order to put off its defeat
Was sending those who had already been crippled back into the fray
Alongside old men and seventeen-year-olds
I had described in a poem how
They dug up the fallen soldier and
With the jubilant participation of all the people’s ratters
Bloodsuckers and exploiters
Marched him back to the battlefields. Now
Preparing a new World War
Determined to outdo even the last in its atrocities
They have done away with people like me, or driven them out
For telling tales about
Their onslaughts.
Foreign policy ballad
And up spake housepainter Hitler:
It took a strong hand to unite us
Now we just have to make certain
There’s no stomach to fight us.
And he shattered the working classes
And embarked on a “mission of peace”
And dispatched his old chum Alfred
To England over the seas.
But Alfred knew no English
He’d never bothered at school
After four days gawping dumbly
He looked a sorry fool.
He came back sniffling to Hitler:
Führer, feel my anguish!
In order to brown-nose the English
You have to speak their language!
When I read they were burning the works . . .
When I read they were burning the works of those
Who had tried to write the truth
But that they’d invited gabbler George, that smooth-talking glosser
To open their academy, I wished more fervently than ever
That the time will come when the people demand of such a man that
Publicly, at a building site in the suburbs
He wheel a barrow of cement across the site
So that one of them, just once, might do something useful—upon which he could
Withdraw forever
And fill his sheets of paper with scribble
At the expense of the
Prosperous working people.
The houses of misfortune
Maintaining them is too costly
Into such houses
Misfortune rushes to move in
It races up the steps as if pursued
Throws down its cases in every room and hangs
A sign above the door: occupied.
The poor man’s pound
When our Lord Jesus walked the earth
And gave the Word to us
He said we should rate highly
The works of usurers.
He counselled all his visitors
Come asking what was right
To make their money make money
Morning, noon and night.
And so to please HIM everyone
Laboured hard and bred
Pounds from pounds and more pounds
As they always had.
And do we not see daily
On earth far and near
That God will not forgive you
If you don’t profiteer?
But what are they supposed to do
Who have no pounds to their name?
Shall they drop dead and vanish
And we go on the same?
Ah, no: if they should vanish
The pounds would vanish too.
Without they sweat, without they bleed
What hope for me and you?
Many are in favour of order . . .
Many are in favour of order. When it’s time to eat they spread
A cloth over the table, if they have one, or they wipe
With their hands the crumbs from the table, so long as
Their hands are not too tired. But their table itself stands
And their house stands in a world which is sinking in filth.
Oh, their cupboard may be clean; but at the edge of town
Stands the factory, the bone mill, the bloody
Surplus profit bucket wheel! What is the use
Up to your chin in the shit, in keeping your
Fingernails clean?
It’s not the cancer that’s subdued . . .
It’s not the cancer that’s subdued
But the body!
The fruitful land is betrayed
But the raging waters are protected!
The lowly are kept low
And the lofty held high
That’s what they call order
The predators are allowed to devour their prey without fear
And say:
How peaceful it is!
The poor get poorer
And the rich get richer
And when everyone is agreed that it should be so
Then there is unity.
He who goes out on the streets to revolt
Is a criminal.
Those whose bellies are full won’t walk the streets
And the profiteers won’t revolt
It follows: they cannot be the criminals.
Do you fear death? Look on it here!
Here lies the man they have beaten! His blood
Spills from him, his eyes
Are misting, his head
Sinks. He is dying!
But there
Walks the other man, he fled from the hooligans
He hid from the oppressors. Where there was fighting
He stayed away. Now
He is walking away and now behold:
He too is dying!
For wherever he goes, hunger
Will walk with him and follow in his footsteps
Into his most secret hiding place.
Where the bullets cannot reach him
It is cold, and even if he is not yet dead
He is nonetheless no longer living.
He won’t grow old. And woe betide
If he leaves it too late to die! Hungry-eyed
His children w
atch his plate! His bed-roll
Is sorely needed!
But the young
Are without prospects and before them stretches
An endless reign of misery
Growing hunger, more brutal oppression!
The planes circle above
Rehearsing the attack that will crush them; the gas
Is already prepared that will be used against them!
The hopeful!
What are you waiting for?
That you will speak with the deaf
And the insatiable
Will share a morsel with you!
That the wolves will feed you, instead of devouring you!
Out of friendship
The tigers will invite you
To pull their teeth!
That is what you are waiting for!
The farmer looks after his fields
1
The farmer looks after his fields
Keeps his stock healthy, pays his taxes
Has children so he can save on hands and
Watches the price of milk.
The townies speak of love of the soil
Of healthy peasant stock and
That the peasant is the nation’s foundation.
2
The townies speak of love of the soil
Of healthy peasant stock and
That the peasant is the nation’s foundation.
The farmer looks after his fields
Keeps his stock healthy, pays his taxes
Has children so he can save on hands and
Watches the price of milk.
You who believed you were fleeing . . .
1
You who believed you were fleeing the intolerable
A man redeemed, yet you pass
Into nothingness.
2
It was something other you sought when you
Threatened to drop out, something other
You did when you fell away.
3
Yes, you disfigure the ranks which you abandon
A lesser man steps into the breach
But if you return
You will find the ranks have closed again.
4
When the years have passed
You too will only take account
Of all that turned out favourably. You will call those
Your favoured years.
5
Even ingratitude
Cannot diminish your contribution
Even justice
Cannot excuse your failure.
1
A report
Of a comrade, who has fallen into völkisch hands
Our people report:
He’s been seen in prison.
He looks brave and in good spirits and still has
All his black hair.
2
Another report
Of a comrade, who has fallen into völkisch hands
Our people report:
He says
He is scarcely one third a human being.
3
With us
But one of our comrades
Who was visited by a doctor in the prison hospital, told him
Head and body bandaged, and with regard to the völkisch forces:
With us
No one is beaten.
We have made a mistake
You are said to have remarked: we
Have made a mistake, that’s why
You want to distance yourself from us.
You are said to have opined: If
Mine eye offends me
I pluck it out.
With that you wished to imply
That you felt so closely bound to us as
A person feels bound
To his own eye.
That is good of you, comrade. But
Permit us to point out:
The person in this image is us. You
Are merely the eye.
And when has it ever been heard that the eye
If the human being to whom it belongs has made a mistake
Should simply remove itself?
Where then would it live?
Address to Comrade Dimitrov, in the fight before the fascist tribunal in Leipzig
Comrade Dimitrov!
Since you have been in the fight before the fascist tribunal
Now, in the midst of the hordes of SA bandits and butchers
And above the din of the steel coshes and rubber truncheons
The voice of Communism speaks out, loud and clear
In Germany’s midst.
They can hear it in all the countries of Europe, as they
Listen out across the borders and into the darkness, but in that darkness too
It is also heard
By all those they have plundered and beaten and
By all those who fight on, undeterred
In Germany.
Penny-pinching, Comrade Dimitrov, you use every minute
Granted you, and the small space that is still
Free, you exploit it
For all of us.
With but a poor command of our language
Time and again shouted down
Dragged to the cells
And weakened by the chains that bind you
You stand up to ask, time and again, those dreaded questions
To indict the guilty and
Make them cry out, until they drag you away and so
Confirm: It is not right they have on their side, but merely power
And you, you can only be struck down, not conquered.
For just like you
If not so visible as you
Thousands of other fighters stand firm, and those
They have beaten bloody in their cellars
Stand up to this power
To kill, but
Not to conquer.
Like you they are accused of fighting hunger
Under suspicion of insurgence against the exploiters
Indicted for the struggle against oppression
And stand convicted of
That most just of causes.
New Year of the persecuted
Another year came to its bitter end
And a yet more bitter one began
Of armies remained a handful of men
Growing to an army again.
I read a page that wasn’t writ
And wrote in a printed book
And then fine company came to visit
Me in my prison nook.
The younger Pitt wore boots with holes
Bonaparte’s coat was gone
Suvorov brought a hen he’d filched
Which Blücher spit-roast on his cane.
Pitt’s sleeves were flecked with grease
Bonaparte had horny hands
Suvorov had a new hiding place
And Blücher a very shrewd mind.
Hannibal was there from the Punic Wars
Swapping jokes with Caesar
Pericles laughed and Seneca asked
Alexander for a visa.
They sat together till cockcrow
And parted with grinning faces
Crept quickly through the police cordon
Back to their hiding places.
But the lowly grass . . .
But the lowly grass is overlooked by the storm
When it is morning
It stands erect once more.
But she who remains the same yet ever changes . . .
But she who remains the same yet ever changes
Was not disheartened when the ground shifted suddenly
When the winds turned against her and tugged roughly at her tresses
She said: This is the hair of many others besides just me.
Here is Vlassova, driven out by you
Here is Arthur’s mother in her red stockings on her knees
This is the woman who brought Oedipus the news
This is the
widow, singing as she washed your linen clean among the reeds.
Yes I have known it all, and shown it time and again
And what you are doing to us now I have cried out abroad
And I can point out to hunger, frost and pain
What they must do, that you shall not succeed.
Working with particular gestures
Working with particular gestures
Can change your character
Change it.
When your feet are higher than your bottom
Then your speech will be different, and the manner of your speech
Will change your thoughts.
A certain vigorous
Movement of the hand, with the back facing downwards and
The upper arm against the body, will convince
Not only others, but also you who make the gesture
Leafing back through when reading, the sketching of a design
Awaiting the second plan
At a time of increasing turmoil across the planet
We await the second plan
Of the first Communist polity.
This is not a plan that envisages
A hierarchy of social ranks in perpetuity