by Tom Kuhn
To do with the skill of the doctor, which consists in
Making yourself well by means of a knowledge of sickness?
Is it for this we bought our knowledge
When now we are unable to sell it?
Why have we gone on developing higher and higher
Until we became bearers of culture, if
Now we cannot sell anything anymore?
Have we not always maintained that research is there for the sake of research
And that science expresses, in complete neutrality, what is?
And now we are not to be rewarded for this wisdom!
How can we be pursued as enemies of the state
When we have always defended the state?
Have we not reassured everyone that everything will soon be better
Quite of its own accord?
Truly, we should have been amongst the persecutors and not
Amongst the persecuted.
The not-to-be-forgotten night
The sky above me on that not-to-be-forgotten night
Was bright enough. The chair on which I sat
Was easy enough. The conversation
Was light enough. The drink
Was sharp enough. And soft enough
Was your arm, girl, on that
Not-to-be-forgotten night.
I used to think: in far-off times . . .
1
I used to think: in far-off times
When the houses have crumbled in which I live
And the boats have rotted on which I travelled
My name will still be spoken
Along with others.
2
Because I praised the useful, and that
Was held in my times to be coarse
Because I fought against religion
Because I fought against oppression or
For another reason.
3
Because I was for humanity and
Entrusted everything to them, thus honouring them
Because I wrote poems and enriched the language
Because I taught practical behaviour or
For some other reason.
4
Therefore, I thought, my name would still be
Spoken, on a stone
My name will stand, from out of books
It will be printed in the new books.
5
But today
I am content that it will be forgotten.
Why
Should one ask after the baker when there is bread enough?
Why
Should the snow be praised that has melted
If new snowfalls are on the way?
Why
Should there be a past, if there is
A future?
6
Why
Should my name be spoken?
To a stadium
This stadium, built
With funds robbed from the people
Shall serve
For the training of the murderers
The thieves
Need to run faster
And those leap higher
Under whose feet the ground has grown too hot.
Poems for Margarete Steffin,
1932–1937
Brecht and Margarete Steffin met for the first time in October 1931. She was twenty-three, from a poor district of Berlin, an activist in the world of Communist music, poetry, and theater. She acted in his play The Mother, they became friends, lovers, and collaborators in his work. She was a gifted linguist. Besides her native German, she had good English, French, and Russian; and could manage effectively in Danish, Swedish, and Finnish. She put those languages, together with her skills as a secretary and her ferociously independent critical mind, at Brecht’s disposal. His sonnets to her are a very characteristic mixture of the highly literary, sexually blatant, aggressive, possessive, comradely, loving, and tender. She answered him back in poems of her own.
The first sonnet
When we were first divided into two
And one of our beds stood here and one stood there
We picked an inconspicuous word to bear
The sense we gave it: I am touching you.
The pleasure of such speaking may seem paltry
For touch itself is indispensable
But we at least kept “it” inviolable
And saved for later, like a surety.
Stayed ours, and yet removed from you and me
Could not be used yet had not ceased to be
Not rightly there and yet not gone away
And standing among strangers we could say
This word of ours as in the common tongue
And mean by it: we know where we belong.
The second sonnet
Being like us both he’d be like neither one
Not you, nor me, so would be known by nobody.
He would begin, and be the end of none
He’d have nothing, and might achieve plenty.
Of course, his father would not have been a soldier
His mother however, she might well have been.
Such a one to friends would be a counsellor
And for his enemies he would be a bane.
And if he did come, on that fortunate day
He would be hidden. And were he brought to light
“NWJ!”, he’d say, which is: “No way, José!”
And thus the learned would dispute about him
So long as he was, he would stay out of sight—
So long as he is not yet, he must become.
The third sonnet
Already thinking we were of a mind
I used—and it was almost without knowing—
The words whose meaning was what we were doing
The commonest such words, the vulgarest kind.
All over again it shocked you through as though
Till now you had not seen what thing we did.
In many weeks of you with me in bed
Of words like that I scarcely taught you two.
But with such words I summon up the shock
Afresh of my first fleshly knowing you.
It can’t be hidden any longer now
Of all your favours you kept not one back.
How could you make yourself common as muck?
The word for what it was you did was
The fourth sonnet
Whom you invited in that friendly fashion
You had no place then to receive him in.
Before he left he expressed dissatisfaction
Arriving fast and fast being gone again.
Could you not find him space for hospitality?
The meanest beggar would have fed his guest.
Neither house nor even a room did he request
But only some small shelter behind a tree.
For altogether he brought you little cheer
So soon dispatched, he seemed to be unwelcome
Having him there seemed quite unprofitable
Which robbed him of the courage to be there.
How coarse then all his wishes seemed to him
And all his haste only deplorable.
The fifth sonnet
Just as they drive up prices on the market
By pointing to the many buyers out there
Some women show how in demand they are.
I find it right they should be blamed for that.
They shouldn’t do it. A woman should indicate
She doesn’t have a choice now. And is chosen.
With nothing, if not with him, in a union.
As though, if he didn’t speak, silence would be her state.
Possible she will hold him by evasiveness
But needing him leads him her way still more.
Also she ought to know who blows on fire
Causes it first to increase then go out.
I only hope she will not suffer drought
From fishing in troubled waters the way she
does.
The sixth sonnet
When all that time ago I fell for you
It was not something I had specially sought:
What you don’t want you will not miss, I thought
Where the pleasure was small, the grief will be small too.
And better no grief than much pleasure had
And better than losing is making do with less.
Not suffering is a man’s idea of bliss.
Could is good, but must is very bad.
This is a shabby doctrine, I admit:
He was never rich who never lost a thing.
Nor am I saying I’d be aggrieved about it . . .
I only mean the man attached to nothing
That man has no bad time ahead.
But things don’t always go as we might think they should.
The seventh sonnet
My advice to you was leave yourself to me.
Stop hawking yourself around the way you do.
But I’m afraid you’ll say: I’d rather let things be
Because the advice you’ve given me suits you.
For then you’d only treat me like a meal
That nobody but one can partake of:
He shoves his plate away, he’s had enough.
They get forgotten, things no one can steal.
What I think is that since by the law of the market
Our sexual parts are there to be exploited
I have a suspicion, and the advice strengthens it . . .
It may be good advice you’ll say, too bad
It seems suspiciously to benefit
The adviser too. Good then: it is unsaid.
The ninth sonnet
When you learned fucking I taught you to feel free
To fuck me and forget me doing so
And eat your pleasure off my plate as though
You were in love with love and not with me.
I said: forget me, if it feels as if
Your pleasure’s with another man, I’ll not complain.
I do not give you me, I give you something stiff
That does not please you just because it’s mine.
But all I wished was you should dive deep in
Your own body and not that you would ever
Become the sort who if a man comes up to her
In error she would at once swim off with him.
I wanted you to not need many men
To learn what to expect from one of them.
The tenth sonnet
But the name I most like calling you is Miff
Because I like you when you’re miffed with me
When you stand up to the Boss of Poetry
Be it, you’re sorting pages for the press or if
His quick hand grabs at what he doesn’t own.
At once you know me not and the thing we do
Using the word I use, how can this clown
This lout, think such a thing of you?
So you sit facing me, irate, remote
“How dare he! And who is this man?”
And before I’m over my astonishment
A visible joy starts up in you again
Severely still you write the new text out
Then suddenly fetch my hand where it was meant.
The eleventh sonnet
Sending you off into that foreign land
Reckoning the winters would be bitter there
For your (loved) hinderparts I chose the thickest wear
And for your legs snug stockings, well fashioned.
And for your front, above and lower down
And for your back I sought out pure wool
To keep warm what I love and so that still
In you some of the warmth of me’d remain.
I dressed you this time carefully just as
Some other times I’ve undressed you (alas
Far too few, I wish I had more often).
Think that my dressing and undressing you are kin.
Now, so I thought, not going cold and for
The future harboured safe, all is in store.
The twelfth sonnet
On Dante’s poems to Beatrice
And even now above her dusty tomb
Whom he was not allowed to fuck but stalked
With shuffling steps whatever ways she walked
The air we breathe still shivers at her name.
For he commanded us to think of her
And wrote such verses for her that indeed
We cannot help but heed them and concede
How beautiful his praises of her are.
Oh the perniciousness that man inspired
By praising with such mighty praises what
He only ever looked at, never tried!
For since he sang her he had only eyed
What looks nice, crosses the street, is never wet
Counts as an object fit to be desired.
The thirteenth sonnet
The word you’ve often said I should not use
Comes from the Italian of Florence
From “fica”, meaning: vulva. They accuse
Even great Dante of vulgarity since
The word comes in his poems. Today I read
That for this he was vilified as once Paris was
Over Helen (though Paris, it must be said
Had more fun in his story than Dante did in his).
So even the sombre Dante as you see
Got caught up in the quarrels that arise
Around this thing that else earns only praise.
Not only Machiavelli teaches us:
In life and books much hot controversy
Has raged around this justly famous locus.
The eighth sonnet
At night, by the hedge they hung the washing on . . .
By the stream in the wood, you were standing, wilderness . . .
In the small wooden bed, under the bronze likeness . . .
On a Swedish bed in the workroom just begun
Drying . . . On the hillside, at a steep angle . . .
Behind the cupboard by the window in the writing room . . .
At the inn, the oil stove stank . . . In that same
Storage corner of the writing room, postprandial . . .
Excited by pianos in the monastery . . .
Furnished; you threw the key down from the balcony . . .
In that hotel—in one room, in both rooms . . .
In the Motherland of the Proletariat . . . All times
Of day, all times of night . . . Occasions
In at least four countries and in all four seasons.
(ENGLISH SONNETS)
Buying oranges
In a yellow fog along Southampton Street
Suddenly a barrow, a slattern plucking at
Her paper bags, and fruit in lamplight.
I stopped struck dumb like one who has seen what
He was running after: there put in his way.
Oranges! No thing else could it ever be!
I blew some warmth into my hands and quickly
Fished in my pockets after cash, to pay
But then between the pence being in my grip
And glancing at the price there written up
In smudged charcoal on newspaper
I caught my own wry whistling undertone
For at that moment bitterly this came clear:
Of course you are not anywhere in this town.
Questions
Write me what you’re wearing. Is it warm?
Write me how you’re lying. Softly in bed?
Write me how you look now. As you always did?
Write me what you miss. Is it my arm?
Write me how you are. Do they let you be?
Write me what their moves are. You won’t quit?
Write me what you’re doing. And the good of it?
Write me what you’re thinking of. Is it me?
These questions are all I have for you, it’s t
rue
And I can hear what comes to me in answer.
When you are tired I can carry nothing for you
And I can give you nothing when you hunger.
It’s quite as though I’d quit the world and were
No more there than if I’d forgotten you.
Habitual loving
Pleasure’s the end but not the terminus.
Felt often, it will often rise again.
It is the doing again what we have often done
That so to one another impels us.
Already long awaited, oh that slight
Tremor there below! The cunning of your flesh!
And what comes next, the pleasant thing you wish
Aloud for in a voice choked in your throat!
The raising of your knees, licence to copulate!
And then the trembling that lets my flesh know
Your scarcely stilled desire’s returned to you!
Your lazy turning, smiling, reaching out
Languidly for me. Often as we do it, should
