The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht
Page 41
But he made him pay the price
Before he took a bite to eat.
It was a bus driver called Krobart
To whom he was betrayed
When in his distress
Wallisch called the man “comrade”.
That man it was who sold him
Instead of helping, and so
Wallisch grew steadily colder
As if up to his neck in snow.
And when they phoned Vienna
To ask what was for the best
Parliament, bless them all,
Had just gone into recess.
And when they sought to find
What the Christian Chancellor thought
The Chancellor was at prayer
And not to be disturbed.
In Leoben in Styria
At the eleventh hour that night
They hanged Wallisch by the neck
As an enemy of the state.
He called out for freedom
With his very dying breath
And two hangmen hung on his legs
Because he wasn’t weight enough.
To the mockery of humanity
That February ’34
They hanged a man who’d fought
For the oppressed and poor
Koloman Wallisch
The carpenter’s son.
Brother, now’s the time
Brother, hold the line
Pass the invisible flag down through the ranks!
In dying no different from when you were living
You’ll not give in, comrade, there’s no forgiving
Today you’re defeated, the others have won
But the war only ends when the last battle’s done
But the war only ends when the last battle’s done.
Brother, now’s the time
Brother, hold the line
Pass the invisible flag down through the ranks!
Oppression or justice, the balance is shifting
We’ll throw off our chains and the clouds will be lifting.
Today you’re defeated, the others have won
But the war only ends when the last battle’s done
But the war only ends when the last battle’s done.
Recently I heard tell . . .
1
Recently I heard tell
That great honours are planned for them.
It is said the rulers
Will shower them with praises.
2
He for whom they plough the fields
Will call them hard-working.
He for whom they weave the coat
And make a new one when the old
Is crumpled from lying about
Fully intends to write them a good reference.
3
The cow is no longer to be disparaged. The milk
Is to be carried aloft to songs of praise.
No one who sits on high
Shall look down upon those who wade in the dirt.
4
If these honours indeed come about
Then, amongst those who hunger
There will be great joy.
Song of the workers and peasants
1
We didn’t beat about the bush
We simply asked for what was just.
Worker and peasant asked if they
Could have their due at last, today
The coal they hack and the cloth they weave
And the bread they harvest sheaf by sheaf
And there was no answer . . .
So hand over the factories! Hand over the fields, now!
We’ve waited enough. We won’t wait anymore!
No excuses, no delay
Let’s have what we’re due today!
2
They told us we were brothers, man to man
We listened and then we asked again:
Worker and peasant asked if they
Could have their due at last, today
The coal they hack and the cloth they weave
And the bread they harvest sheaf by sheaf
And there was no answer . . .
So hand over the steelworks! Hand over the farms!
We’ve waited enough. We won’t wait more!
No excuses, no delay
Let’s have what we’re due today!
3
They told us the honour was ours all right!
We took them in a clinch to give them a fright:
Worker and peasant asked if they
Could have their due at last, today
The coal they hack and the cloth they weave
And the bread they harvest sheaf by sheaf
And there was no answer . . .
So hand over the steelworks! Hand over the farms!
We’ve waited enough. We won’t wait more!
No excuses, no delay
Let’s have what we’re due today!
4
And then they said we should just wait
They took us for fools, that was plain
Worker and peasant asked if they
Could have their due at last, today
The coal they hack and the cloth they weave
And the bread they harvest sheaf by sheaf
And there was no answer . . .
So hand over the steelworks! Hand over the farms!
We’ve waited enough. We won’t wait more!
Let’s not fright or shy away!
Let’s have what we are due today!
Worker and peasant, take up arms!
Napoleon
The Revolution had come and gone
Then Napoleon came along
He got crowned Emperor by the bourgeoisie
For they were now masters in gay Paree.
His marshals were all barmaid’s sons
He paid good wages to his grenadier guns.
His powerful artillery
Lent its weight to industry.
The other nations chased him out
But their lazy princes hung about.
And snaffled all there was to be had:
When the very worst drove out the bad.
Report from Germany
We hear that in Germany
In the days of the Brown Plague
On the roof of an engineering works suddenly
In the November wind a red flag fluttered
The forbidden flag of freedom!
That grey November day from the skies
Fell a raw mixture of rain and snow
But it was the seventh, the day of the Revolution!
And behold, the red flag!
In the yards the workers stand
Shielding their eyes with their hands, and look
Into the sleet and up to the roof.
Then come the lorries with the stormtroopers
And they drive all those in overalls against the walls
And bind with ropes all those calloused fists
And out of the barracks and from the interrogation
They stumble, beaten and bloodied
But not one of them has named the man
Who was up on the roof.
This is how they drive away all those who keep their silence
And the rest, they’ve had enough already.
But the next day, there once again
Flying from the roof of the works
The red flag of the proletariat. Once again
Through the deathly quiet of the town
The boots of the stormtroops thunder. In the yards
There are no men to be seen now. Only women
Stand there with stony faces, shielding their eyes
They look into the sleet and up to the roof.
And the beatings begin again. Under interrogation
The women testify: this flag
Is a bed-sheet, on it we
Carried away one who died yesterday.
We are not to blame for the colour.
It�
��s red with the blood of the man you murdered.
Walking next to the loathsome, the virtuous . . .
Walking next to the loathsome, the virtuous now take their places
Scientists walk with the liars and doctors walk with the butchers
Architects, dreaming of fame and mindful of the accomplishments
Of past generations, build them their prisons, with schools alongside
So that the crowds, bewildered, admire the graceful proportions
Gaze on the sweep of a roof, or the elegant lines of a doorway
Which perhaps in time to come may close on their own sons forever.
So too the friends of music now take delight in the latest blend
Of teasing soundscapes, in hymns that seek to transfigure
Sacrifice in the service of bandits and warmongers.
Oh, but this music and the work of artists and architects
Are but pale imitation, of true art a gross profanation
Fashioned from hand-me-down fragments, with none of the verve that might
Herald a new age for humanity—and yet they appear to the masses
To show the new rulers hand in hand with the artists.
What subverts
In the first months of the National Socialist regime
A worker in a small town on the Czech border
Was condemned to prison for smuggling communist leaflets.
Since of his five children one had already starved to death
The judge was reluctant to send him to prison for long, and so
At the public hearing he asked him, whether he had perhaps just
Been subverted by communist propaganda.
I don’t know what you mean, said the worker, but my child
Was subverted by hunger.
[Two questions]
How should one
Hate oppression, if one does not
Hate the oppressors?
The hungry, who
Take your last loaf, you see as your enemy.
But the thief who has never gone hungry
You do not leap at his throat.
We unhappy wretches!
The prey of the hunt is still brought down
Just as it was brought down in our time
The meat still falls in the same place, but
We have been driven away!
What an injustice:
Because of the form of our noses and colour of our hair
We are denied our part in the quarry!
Some of us were even chased over the border, because
Our nerves gave up in the face of the hardly human
Appearance of the exploited and the condition
Of their sleeping places, rags and fodder!
Gripped by weakness we demanded
In mellifluous words, that these too should be helped.
These mellifluous words plunged us into misfortune
(Unless it was the form of our noses and colour of our hair)
There we were, sitting with the ruling classes at their table
Eating the good fare and cursing the butchers
The butchers who slaughtered the calf we were eating
Because of the blood on their aprons!
And then the butchers threw us out.
The age of my prosperity
Seven weeks of my life I was rich.
From the proceeds of a play I bought myself
A house in a big garden. I had looked
On it for more weeks than I then lived in it. At different times of day
And at night too, I walked past, to observe
How the old trees stood over the lawns in the early dawn
Or the pond with the mossy carp of a rainy morning
To see the hedges in the full sun of midday
The white rhododendrons in the evening, after vesper bells.
Then I moved in with my friends. My car
Stood there beneath the spruces. We looked about: there was nowhere from which
You could see all the bounds of this garden, the slope of the lawns
And the groups of trees prevented the hedges from looking one to another.
The house itself was fine too. The staircase of a noble wood, and expertly worked
With low steps and a well-proportioned handrail. The whitewashed rooms
Had wood-panelled ceilings. Great iron stoves
Daintily formed were wrought with scenes: of labouring peasants.
Into the cool hall with its oak benches and tables
Led heavy doors, their brass handles
Not carelessly chosen, and the stone flags around the brownish house
Smooth and worn by the footsteps
Of earlier inhabitants. What genial proportions! Each room different
And each one the best! And how they changed with the time of day!
The change of the seasons, surely delightful, we never experienced, for
After seven weeks of real prosperity we left that property, soon to
Flee over the border.
The delight of ownership was something I felt deeply and I am glad
To have felt it. To walk through my park, receive guests
Debate building plans, as others of my profession have done before me
Gave me pleasure, I confess. Yet seven weeks seem enough.
I went without regrets, or with few regrets. Writing this
I already have trouble remembering. When I ask myself
How many lies I would have been prepared to tell to hold on to that possession
I know, it is not many. And so I hope
It was not a bad thing to have the property. It was itself
Not a little thing, but
There is more.
Dannebrog
Oh don’t try to fool yourselves
For a life where you might as well be dead—
Wipe the silly cross from off your flag
And make it red!
The great guilt of the Jews
In our country it’s the Jews who are to blame for all ills.
Everyone knows from the Führer’s speeches
That his party was founded only
To root out the Jews.
So that means: without the Jews
There would be no gauleiters and governors
Living in castles and villas
Eating and drinking like there’s no tomorrow, and
Bullying about, not only at home but abroad too,
So that they then have to raise a gigantic army
And there would be no two million spies and
Fifty-eight million spied upon
There would be no call for the hulking great National Socialist Party
By which, of an annual national income of some sixty billion
More than twenty billion are gobbled up.
On the Jews
Two thousand years after Aristotle
Four hundred years after Descartes, after so much instruction
Great masses of the people still believed in the Devil in human form
Even physicists, accustomed
To mistrust the finest of instruments, and historians who
In their books constantly encountered
The causes of similar urgings. Mathematicians
Repudiated formulae written by those
With noses to which the state took exception. Even the inventors
Of poison gases and the instruments of death were not welcome, if
Their hair curled suspiciously at the nape of their necks.
If the Jews did not counsel against it . . .
If the Jews did not counsel against it
The King of England would show our Chancellor his Indian Empire and say:
Help yourself, do, please. And for ages
The French Parliament has wanted nothing so much as to make a gift to our Chancellor
Whose moustache they so admire, of the ore mines of Lorraine
But th
e Jews won’t let them.
Before the Führer explained it, we had no idea
What a clever and powerful people the Jews are.
Although they are only few and scattered all over the globe
It seems that, by virtue of their genius, they are masters of it all.
At a nod from them
The British lion rolls on his back and wags his tail
The great city of New York, which reaches up to the heavens, more fears their frowns than it fears an earthquake
And they’ve got the Pope eating out of their hands.
Under these circumstances, everyone asks, with a shudder
What might have become of the earth
Had the Führer, for his great plans
Instead of that modestly gifted German nation,
Chosen the Jewish people.
The hole in Ilyich’s boot
You who are making the statue of Ilyich
Twenty metres high, on the Palace of the Unions
Don’t forget, in his boot
That widely attested hole, the symbol of poverty.
I hear, namely, that he is facing
West, where many live who, by this hole in his boot
Will recognize Ilyich as
One of their own.
The last request
In Altona, during a raid on the workers’ quarter
They caught four of our men. At their execution
They dragged seventy-five workers along to watch.
This is what they saw. The youngest, a big man, when asked
What was his last request (as convention demands)
Said drily, he desired once more to be able to stretch.
Released from his fetters, he stretched, and struck
The leader of the Nazi troops as hard as he could
With both fists, under the chin. Only then did they bind him