by Tom Kuhn
Left there standing at the corner
With her household at her feet.
It was cold, it was November
Many a woman brought so low
(It wasn’t just the moths that shivered)
Might not recover from the blow.
But our Widow Queck was different:
As the neighbours came to view
She held a little farewell dinner
With a bottle of schnapps and eel stew.
And she posted off her older
Boys to see a film, by tram
So that they might live a little
Before their youth was done and gone.
Then she gave her little Edward
A good cigar jammed in his snout:
If the lad was smoking imports
He’d be less inclined to shout.
For the youngest then a nanny
Summoned on the telephone
While the widow turned a profit
From some shares she used to own.
Then she told a taxi driver
“Hotel Adlon, if you please!”
But before she got in, smiling
Everybody got a squeeze.
She departed with a saying
Such as Solomon once dispensed:
When the worst befalls us, there must
Be no shrinking from expense!
Thus she spake in Moabit
And so garnered some renown
For she showed a certain wisdom
Very few can call their own.
When we came down into the Third Reich . . .
When we came down into the Third Reich
The nearby coast seemed to us
An Atlantis.
We saw a tree standing where we sojourned
And we said:
Under that tree we sat
Back then.
And by that we meant:
In the golden age.
We forgot how damp
Were our habitations.
Thus the criminals, who
Fell on us as we slept
Have filthied our homeland.
That we heap praise on a past
Which was like unto a hell.
Ni-en’s song
The fruit tree that bears no fruit
Is rebuked infertile. Who
Examines the earth it grows in?
The branch that gives way
Is rebuked rotten, but
Was it not burdened with snow?
Rules for associating with those who concern themselves with the big issues
It is good to look for the small things in the great
But do not overlook
The great in the small.
In the presence of one who, bent over his notepad
Can correctly calculate the paths of the stars
Don’t career about like a chicken!
He comprehends movement only when
By its great size it has achieved a certain constancy.
If you career about like a chicken
He will notice you, but
He will move on from you to others
So as to discover the pattern in the greater numbers.
He who is accustomed to speak to many
Will answer you with regard to the many
Omitting little differences, neglecting the accidental
Weighing the necessary and the possible
You, therefore, must sit there like unto many.
He who is responsible gives form to events
Because he has to take stock of them
His days don’t flow by as a river: without chapters.
He must know what he has done
Because he has learnt: he is doing it for the many.
Make sure he can appreciate the consequences!
The moon, to reflect its phases, needs
Only a small part of the ocean
A small puddle may also reflect the great moon
So long as it is not muddied.
On violence
The raging stream they call violent
But the riverbed that contains it
No one calls that violent.
The storm that bends the birch trees
Is thought violent
But what about the storm
That bends the backs of the road menders?
If what is should endure . . .
If what is should endure
Then you are lost.
Your friend is change
Your companion in arms is discord.
From nothing
You must make something. But the mighty
Shall be brought to nothing.
Whatever you have, give it up, and take up instead
What is denied you.
How should I write immortal works . . .
How should I write immortal works, if I am not famous?
How should I answer if I am not asked?
Why should I waste time on lines of poetry when time in turn will waste them?
I write my proposals in a language that will last
Because I fear it will be a long time before they are implemented.
In order that great things be achieved, we will need great changes.
The little changes are the enemies of the great changes.
I have enemies. So I must be famous.
The new Don Quixote
In times like these it seems as if
I’m not at all that familiar oaf
But, as if I were some higher being
Like those of whom I’m always reading
No trot-along, but a real man
I don’t just dream, but I actually can.
The day seems to follow its normal course
While I am filled with a mysterious force
My secret power grows and forms
My little room bursts at the seams
I step into the world: vengeance to wreak!
I confound the mighty! I succour the meek!
All those who are weak and trampled on
Look up and greet their champion
The air is filled with their grateful sighs
For I am the man who will change their lives.
And so: as well as my life of chores
I’ve a second life, where I settle the scores.
Song from The True Story of Jacob Trotalong
Buy one get one free, we’re two a penny
Always one, at least, too many
We stand here grousing, touching forelocks, shining shoes
All for hire
Make a bid, we need a buyer
We have to live, we haven’t much to lose.
Oh no sir, all those luxury oddities
They were sold out long ago
We’re the bargain-basement commodities
Don’t expect too much, oh no.
We’re cut-price fathers, knockdown offers
Our own kids see that we don’t fit
And if they show they’re frightened of us
Then we box their ears a bit.
We’re husbands from the sale bucket
No returns, no money back
By Saturday we’ll all be wed or chucked
We’re the absolute remnant rack.
Dear me, the tender souls amongst us
Quickly end up on the rubbish heap.
We’re the last ones hanging on the shelves now
Damaged goods and going cheap.
Kin-jeh’s song about the abstemious Chancellor
I have heard it said, the Chancellor doesn’t drink
He eats no meat and doesn’t smoke
And he lives in a small apartment.
But I have also heard it said that the poor
Are starving and prostrated in misery.
How much better would a state be of which one could say:
The Chancellor lolls drunkenly in the cabinet
Contemplating the smoke from their pipes, a handful
Of
ignoramuses doctor the statutes
There are no poor people.
Hoppeldoppel Wopp’s louse
Up the greater Mengel vennel crept a louse
She looked a state, so weak and pite-ouse.
She swayed this way and that, and sighed and sobbed
As if the poor old girl had been set upon and robbed.
You had to stop and ask yourself: what’s with this louse
And why does she look so almost posthum-ouse?
Hoppeldoppel Wopp, she’d breakfasted back there
Hoppeldoppel Wopp has just a single hair
And then there’s skin, and then there’s bone beneath that.
Well, the landlord scratched his head and lifted his hat.
Aha, now we know what the lost louse longed for most:
Off to Herr Hoppeldopp to be her host!
Whatever next?
Old Father Kuhn
Eats jam with a spoon
Lina the Large
Cooks horse meat in marge
Twice a week Widow Plum
Washes the underwear of her eldest son
The family of Herr Schober
Already had the heating on in October
And carpenter Klein
Often shows a light after nine
Hearing these tales it can be no wonder
A Volk such as this is bound to go under.
Tirelessly . . .
Tirelessly
The fisherman throws out his net
Into the speeches of the rulers
Draws up stones, holds them high
And shows them to the hungry.
Granted, the Browning was found . . .
Granted, the Browning was found in worn hands
But the bullets too were found in poorly clothed bodies.
Some Poems for Ruth Berlau
Ruth Berlau was a fiercely independent Danish journalist and theater practitioner, and a feminist. When she and Brecht met in 1933 the mutual attraction was immediate. Within a few years Berlau decided to end her marriage and to make her life dependent on Brecht’s. She became an awkward member of the crowded inner circle and, in due course, an important collaborator, both in the work on texts and, later, in the work with photographs (the Modelbooks, Theatre Work, and so on). The twelve poems that follow are all addressed to her. The circumstances were that they had both traveled to Paris for the Second International Writers’ Congress for the Defense of Culture and Berlau had gone on to Madrid, a journey which Brecht, in the context of the Civil War, thought too dangerous. The poems recount the breakdown in communication between them that resulted.
Kin-Jeh said of his sister
We loved one another between the battles.
From column to column
Marching by, we waved. There were letters
Poste restante in the taken cities. Awaiting my enemies
In hiding, poorly housed
I heard her light tread, she
Brought food and news. Quickly at the railway station
We agreed how we should continue our operations.
With the dust of the road still on my lips
I kissed her. Around us
Everything changed. Our affections
Did not change.
When he came to fetch her . . .
When he came to fetch her
Back to that little house with the thatched roof
On a particular evening
On a particular platform at the station
No bags had been packed
In that faraway place.
There was likewise no plan to return
When the coming was announced.
So he who had come drove
Back across the islands and the channel
And through the many hours of the journey
He felt ashamed.
When the stone says . . .
When the stone says it will fall to earth
If you throw it in the air
Then believe it.
When the water says you will get wet
If you enter the water
Believe it.
When your girlfriend writes that she will come
Don’t believe her. Here
No power of nature is at work.
To be read mornings and evenings
He whom I love
Has told me
That he needs me.
That’s why
I take care of myself
Watch my step and
Fear every raindrop
Lest it strike me down.
Our unceasing conversation . . .
Our unceasing conversation that was like
The conversation of two poplars and that had lasted many years
Has fallen silent. I no longer hear
The things you say or write nor do you hear
The things I say.
I held you on my lap and combed your hair
I instructed you in the art of war
And taught you how to conduct yourself with a man
How to read books and how to read faces
How to fight and how to rest
But now I see
How much I never said to you.
Often I wake in the night choking
On useless counsels.
Kin-Jeh’s second poem about his sister
Through all the years when after long absences
I entered her house I seemed expected and the chair
Set ready and the kettle on the hob.
Laughing she told me of all the stupidities
That had occurred. Hers included
And even mine. And I was always expecting
Her light step to my door, ready
To lay all else aside when she came in. Our experiences
We recounted like historical events, we spoke
Of the eight nights and the return from Spain
The trip in the Ford
And bringing the rug with us.
On the fickleness of women
Perhaps I’d even be content to let her go
And lie with other men who catch her eye
Why not be free? What’s it to me!
If only every grope from every beau
Didn’t induce her so to swoon and sway
Even if it wasn’t really much
And someone simply gave her bum a touch
She’ll play the blushing maiden led astray.
And so mysterious! As if, eyes all a-flutter
She’d cuckolded her know-all man, and he
Must never know, or woe betide us if he learns
That, yes indeed, she’d wiggled with her charms!
Only at the end though, and when it hardly matters . . .
And so there’s strife, although there really needn’t be.
Last love song
When the candle guttered out
And the stump was dead and cold
When our paths had petered out
Oh, all the angry names we called.
Beatrice found herself indicted
Informers tracked her every move
The case was heatedly debated
Instead of oaths the court saw blood.
In all that raging to the heavens
Hate enjoyed the starring part
Tom, Dick, Harry—those ancient sages
Saw it coming from the start.
Fruitless call
O faint sea-roaring in the black receiver!
No rapid heartbeat, only an empty tick!
And then a whispering, as of seven towns, comes over
And a tired voice says: svarer ikke.
And so the far-away room must be empty.
You are not here. And now you are not there.
As though I heard: the ship must be at sea
And quite beyond any call from any quarter.
Our dialogue that had not needed voices
(For we could hear in things that went unsaid
The
questions, new ones, rising nonetheless)
Our dialogue has only now gone dead.
Ardens sed virens
Wondrous, what stays strong and is not
In the fire to ashes turned!
Sister, hear me, you are precious
Burning, and yet unconsumed.
I’ve seen love grow sly and cold and
Passions crash—with nothing learned.
Sister, you are one for keeping
Burning, and yet not consumed.
In the fray you had no waiting
Steed on which you could depend.
So I watched you, wary, fighting
Burning, and yet unconsumed.
Bivvy
Is the copper kettle
Hanging there to hand?
And on your finger do you
Still wear the little iron band?
Is the leather notebook
Lying on the board?
Will you sit down at it
In your widow’s garb?
The pipe and the chessboard too
And me, as well you know
We wait here, oh, whenever you
Walk out of the house in the cause
That’s also very much my own.
