The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht

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