by Tom Kuhn
We not do it so often it would not be so good.
When we had been apart . . .
When we had been apart longer than ever before
Fearfully I searched your letters through for such
Words unknown to me as would say you were
No longer the one I know so well and miss so much.
And yet it must be that, seeing one another again
At once we’d recognize how in need we are
19th Sonnet
Encounter with the ivory guardians
One day when no news of you had come
I summoned the guardians, the six elephants,
To the Arc de Triomphe and they took up their stance
That night towards eleven on the Avenue de Wagram.
They eyed me, swaying slightly. I said to them
When I left her in your protection
I ordered you to trample anyone
She made complaint about to strawberry jam.
They stood in silence till the largest beast
Lifting his trunk, malignly slowly
Pointed, trumpeting, to the guilty party: me.
Like thunder all six charged. I fled. So chased
To the post office and squinting frightened through
The window I wrote the letter I owed you.
The good comrade M.S.
I came to you as a teacher and as a teacher
I might have departed from you. But because I learned
I stayed. For later also
Finding refuge beneath the Danish thatch
Even then I did not leave you.
And you gave me one from among you
To go with me.
So that she will test and check
Everything I say; and from now on
Correct every line
Being schooled in the school of the combatants
Against oppression.
Since then, in frail health but
Cheerful in the spirit
She has strengthened me. Not corruptible
Even by me. Often
With a smile I cross out a line myself already guessing
What she would say about it.
But in other company she defends me
I have heard she got up from her sickbed
To explain the usefulness of the Lehrstücke to you
Knowing as she does that I exert myself
To serve your cause.
Standing orders for the soldier GGGGGGG
1
However we discuss it
Life’s in a terrible way
But now we’ll interrupt it:
The soldier will have her say.
A word of advice for you:
Don’t mix it with me
I am a soldier. So
Best let me be.
2
The country I set foot in
(Or room, the same is true)
Falls under my occupation
And I don’t begin ruling tomorrow but now.
And for real, not for show.
And resistance, there’ll be none.
Room, people, a word of advice for you:
Don’t mix it with me
I am a soldier. So
Best let me be.
3
All I need I have here
My cloak that will never tear
My gun—Emmi, I call her
The common sense of a soldier
Handy by, altogether.
Sister, brother, a word of advice for you:
Don’t mix it with me
I am a soldier. So
Best let me be.
4
What no soldier forgets
But continually gives thought to:
Once you have got behind you
The difficulties of the mountains that’s
The point when
The difficulties of the plains begin.
Difficulties, a word of advice for you:
Don’t mix it with me
I am a soldier. So
Best let me be.
5
The soldier’s orders are her own
To conquer. She is never stood down.
But, giving the orders, she is content.
She kips wherever she’s sent.
World, a word of advice for you:
Don’t mix it with me
I am a soldier. So
Best let me be.
6
The soldier marches (sometimes she limps).
Till she is dead she is not conquered.
Wherever she camps
That place is sequestered.
Camp, a word of advice for you:
Don’t mix it with me
I am a soldier. So
Best let me be.
Addendum:
A soldier is hungry until
She has eaten her fill.
She is hungry till then
(Whatever may happen).
The revolutionary soldier’s luck
The soldier is in luck.
The ships she sails on fare well
They are valuable
And they bring her back.
Her weapon is good.
Round here it’s the best there is.
She is right to love it the way she does
And keep it safe: so she should.
Her squad are as hard as iron
It is said of them far and wide
They are skilled, they are shrewd
At doing whatever can be done.
The soldier is in luck.
For example, in this war
Her courage is power
And she does not draw back.
The soldier has no excuses
She fights badly or luck leaves her
No matter: if she loses
She is not a good soldier.
Second song of the Soldier of the Revolution
1
For me, soldier of the Revolution
Wherever I live, it is all one.
Dark and small the room may be
Every room is a bunker for me
A particular position
Emplacement for a gun.
2
The land around is not my affair
I can see at once what’s wanting there.
Mostly it’s not the land that’s bad
But the rabble who run it and think they should.
We must set our faces against this rabble
Till everywhere life is bearable.
3
I don’t need friendships either, and why?
I report to my unit at once, that’s why.
Those are my friends who are standing there
Though I never saw them in my life before.
I know them as friends very easily:
They are ready to fight alongside me.
4
My friends fetch me my ration of bread
And the new passwords to store in my head.
They help me dress my wounds and then
Find the hole in the wall again
So I’ll get through from where I am
To where I was and was driven from.
5
Though I still can’t give as good as I get
At once I begin to fight the best I’m let.
I look about me, I learn the ways
We shall win by and those by which we’d lose.
So every place becomes a position
For combat, for a soldier of the Revolution.
Poems from the German War Primer Complex
The beginning of war
When Germany is armed to the teeth
A great injustice will befall it
And the drummer-boy will wage his war.
You, however, will defend Germany
In foreign and unfamiliar lands
And fight against people much like yourselves.
The drummer-boy will prate about liberation
But the oppression in
the country will be unlike anything experienced before.
And he may well win every battle
But for the last.
Then, when the drummer-boy loses his war
Germany’s war will be won.
On the heels of the regime’s rallies
Follow like shadows
The rumours.
The rulers roar
The people whisper.
The housepainter says:
The more big guns that are forged
The longer the peace will last.
According to that logic, it must be:
The more grain that is sown in the earth
The less corn will grow.
The more bullocks are slaughtered
The less meat there’ll be.
The more the snow in the mountains melts
The shallower the rivers will run.
The farmer ploughs the field
Who
Will bring in the harvest?
The old
Carry their money off to the savings bank.
In front of the bank stand vans.
They transport the money
To the munitions factories.
Those who fought against their own people
Fight now against other peoples.
To stand alongside the old slaves
Come new slaves.
The young people sit bent over their books.
For what are they learning?
No book teaches
How, hanging in the barbed wire
You get a drink of water.
The girls under the village trees
Select their lovers.
Death makes
His selection too.
Maybe
Not even the trees will live.
It is night.
The married couples
Take themselves off to their beds. The young women
Will bear orphans.
Like a robber
In the moonless night, looking over his shoulder
Lest a policeman should come by
So too the man
Who is on the trail of truth.
And like some stolen booty
Hunched shoulder in fear
Lest a hand should fall on it
He carries the truth away.
Those who protested
Have been beaten to death
But those who didn’t defend themselves
Have also been beaten to death.
In war many things will increase.
These things will get bigger
The possessions of the haves
And the misery of the have-nots
The speeches of the Führer
And the silence of his followers.
Uncollected Poems
1936–1937
However ill they treat you . . .
However ill they treat you
Don’t give up on your own kind!
The peasant who’s always ploughed the stony ground
May mistrust you like a cattle dealer
And chase you from his door:
But whoever has even one horse too few
Has ears to hear your message.
Don’t give up on your own kind!
The worker who’s always oiled the machines
That don’t belong to him, may betray you
Four times, but trust him the fifth!
Don’t take any chances, but
Take him into your reckoning:
Don’t give up on your own kind!
The soldier, who has no use for victory
May well fear his officers and bind
You to the gun carriage, and yet
He will be your helper on the appointed day
When you have opened his eyes:
Don’t give up on your own kind!
They follow their enemy, so long as they are blind
But they will follow you when they can see.
Don’t give up on your own kind!
Don’t demand too much wisdom:
It doesn’t require much wisdom to see
That one is more than nothing.
Don’t count only on the dependable:
No one will abandon
Their only helper.
Don’t rely only on the brave:
Most people are brave enough
To save their own lives.
Don’t give up on your own kind!
Song of the widow in love
Oh I know I never should admit
That I tremble when he touches me
Oh however did I get like this
That I pray he’ll lead me where he wants to be.
Sin’s a thing wild horses wouldn’t drag me to
If I didn’t want him the way I do.
When I fought against love like I did
Let’s be honest it was because without a doubt
Once I stand before him half-naked
He will strip me, he will clean me out.
Will he care when I reproach him? No.
If only I didn’t want him the way I do.
I’m not sure that he is worthy of me
And is it really love he feels and when
He has gobbled up my savings won’t he
Chuck the leavings of me in the bin?
Oh I know why I’ve told him no till now:
If only I didn’t want him the way I do.
If I’d had a pennyworth of sense
I’d never have given him what (alas) he begged me for
I’d have slapped him round the head at once
If he—which he did—came too close and went too far
I wish he’d clear off where I told him to!
(If only I didn’t want him the way I do.)
By ship, in cars, on foot, by plane or train . . .
1
By ship, in cars, on foot, by plane or train
They came in haste to meet the simple salutation out of Spain
The word: Salud!
2
A short word for such a journey and ordeal
By plane or train, in cars, by ship, on foot!
But handed out with something made of steel
And with a friend’s smile, it could seem a lot!
The word: Salud!
3
When from their trench mortars their grenades
Come whistling over us
This is the word with which his own class greets
For which he fights, their fight
On foreign soil and over foreign streets
And yet his own kind
The housepainter gets us to build him a battleship . . .
The housepainter gets us to build him a battleship
And a very fine battleship too.
Then a second fine battleship, make it a pair
And we’re all so happy, but he won’t stop there
For two—that’s nothing, and that won’t do.
So soon a whole fleet lies ready to go
And off they sail—what a splendid show!
Look, there sails your butter, my lad
Swimming down the river out to sea.
No complaints about dry bread, my lad
There sails your butter, don’t you see!
The housepainter has some aeroplanes built
With a flick of the wrist if the need should arise
You can turn them into well-armed warplanes too
And they climb up high in the sky so blue
And other brave warplanes fly alongside
Look, there flies your butter, my lad
Nothing to be scared of, let’s see you smile.
The times that are coming require nerves of steel, my lad
The housepainter’s told us so for quite some while.
Thought in the works of the classics
Naked and unadorned
It steps before you, without shame, certain
Of its usefulness.
It is not w
orried
That you already know, it is enough
That you have forgotten.
It speaks
With the crudity of greatness. Without circumlocutions
Without introduction
It appears, accustomed
To respect, because it is useful.
Its audience is misery, with no time to waste.
Cold and hunger keep watch over
Their attention. The slightest lapse
Condemns them to further destruction.
Though it appears so commanding
It still shows that it means nothing without an audience
Would neither have come nor know
Where to go or where to stay
If not accepted. Indeed, if not taught
By those ignorant yesterday
It would quickly lose its force and rapidly collapse.
The homecoming of Odysseus
There is the roof. Dispelling that first doubt.
Smoke drifting from the hearth: there’s someone home.
Aboard the ship they’d thought: it might turn out
That nothing here was unchanged save the moon.
The legend of Widow Queck
Widow Queck with her five children
Found herself out on the street
