by Tom Kuhn
Cities are built, inhabited only by functionaries.
The housewives return from the shops with empty bags
But the parade grounds
Cover an entire province.
The factories labour
Day and night.
No hand is idle. And yet
No belly is full.
Knowledge is cultivated too. Out from the libraries
Step the slaughtermen.
The doubter
Whenever to us it seemed
The answer to a question had been found
One of us loosed the cord on the wall of the old
Furled Chinese canvas, so that it unrolled and
Revealed the man on the bench, who
Doubted so deeply.
I, he said to us
Am the doubter. I doubt whether
The work that has consumed your days has been well done.
Whether what you say, were it less well said, would be of worth to anyone.
Whether, rather, you said it well but perhaps did not
Attend to the truth of what you said.
Whether it is not ambiguous—for you are responsible
For every possible error. Or it may be too unambiguous
And remove the contradictions from things: is it too unambiguous?
For if so, what you say is useless. Your thing is lifeless then.
Are you truly in the flow of things? At one with
Everything that is becoming? Are you still becoming? Who are you? To whom
Do you speak? To whom is what you have to say of use?
And, by the way:
Does it leave you clear-headed? Can it be read in the morning?
Is it connected to what is already there to hand? Have you made use
Of the sentences spoken before you—at least to refute them? Is everything verifiable?
By experience? By what experience?
But above all
Always and above all else: how does one act
If one believes what you say? Above all: how does one act?
Thoughtfully, curiously, we saw the doubting
Blue man on the canvas, looked at one another and
Started once more from the beginning.
The poorer pupils from the suburbs
The poorer pupils in their thin overcoats
Always came too late to lessons
They were doing milk or newspaper rounds for their mothers.
The teachers scolded and
Entered their names in the red book.
They brought no bread rolls with them. In the breaks
They wrote their homework in the toilets.
That was forbidden. The breaks
Were for recreation or for eating.
When they didn’t know the Archimedean constant π
The teachers would ask them: why
Didn’t you stay in the gutter whence you came?
But they knew the answer to that.
These poorer children from the suburbs
They’d been promised lowly positions in state service.
That’s why they learnt, by rote and in the sweat of their brows
The contents of their dirty second-hand books
Learned to lick the teachers’ boots and
To despise their own mothers.
The lowly positions for the poorer children from the suburbs
Lay underground. Their work stations
Had no stools. Their prospects
Were the roots of small plants. Why had they been made to learn
Greek grammar and Caesar’s campaigns
The formula for sulphur and the value of π?
In the mass graves of Flanders where they were bound
What more did they need than
A handful of lime?
The ballad of knowledge
Oh, I’m a sprat, or so they always tell me
A petty salesman, just a retail clerk
And it’s the sharks who get to rule the ocean.
I say: How do I get to be a shark?
So what precisely makes a shark so special?
What is it we fishes haven’t got?
It’s knowledge makes a shark: who’s next for dinner?
If you know that, then you can take your cut.
There’s some poor devils labour every hour
And what they lack—no sweat will ever bring
And all they’ve got to call their own are: troubles
And all because they just don’t know a thing.
It’s like: you need a horse if you go riding
Without it you’ll get trampled like as not.
In every walk of life you need the knowledge:
And if you’ve got it, you can take your cut.
There’s one man knows about a wealthy widow
Another has the lowdown on a rich old man
Whoever knows can buy that man or woman
It’s knowledge gives the edge to any man.
If you’ve got dirt about the city council
You’re sorted. There’s no ifs or buts.
If you know something, then you’ve got a certain
How should I say?—distinction. Take your cut.
If someone knows a builder and a landowner
Whose creditors are looking to collect
And if he knows a rich man wants a villa
Why, suddenly our man’s an architect!
Compare the man who doesn’t know, he’s useless
He’ll limp along perhaps, but not keep up
Be better if his mother hadn’t had him
But he who knows—well, he can take his cut.
Let’s say you’re wracked by painful stomach troubles.
The doctor takes one look—he’s seen enough.
The patient crawls away in pain, but first
He pays, because the doctor knows his stuff.
He knows the Latin name for every sickness
What’s more he knows the rate for an aching gut.
Without the knowledge, why, you’ll always be a poor man
While the man who knows, he takes his cut.
So one man knows about antiques and suchlike
And how to create that wormy well-worn look.
Another knows the inside lore on fishing
And how to get a fish to take the hook.
A third man knows about the real poor folk
And what they’d do for less than a kick up the butt
But he who nothing knows becomes the quarry
And he who knows, you said it: takes his cut.
The Chancellor’s economics
Occasionally the Chancellor presents to an astonished world
Proof of his deep insight
Into economics.
He folds his arms across his chest and says
In a deep voice:
If we were to raise the wages of the workers
What do you think would happen then? Then
Prices would rise too.
After such statements
The Chancellor squints across at the workers
Standing behind his bodyguards, and tries to make out
If they’re pleased
The regime isn’t putting up the wages.
But the faces of the workers
Remain unmoved.
They know very well
That the prices rise when the wages go up
And they also know why, namely
Because someone has to make a profit, and if
Wages rise then the profit will evaporate
Unless the prices
Are raised in equal measure.
The fact that the Chancellor seems to believe
Prices always have to rise and in all circumstances
When wages rise, following some natural law, like
Rivers must rise after a heavy downpour, that
Fills the workers with contempt.
For they also know
When they have introduced socialism
Prices will no longer climb up after wages:
No one will have to squeeze a profit.
The prisoner’s dreams
Oh after my fashion I
Even in that time of blood
Still for pleasantry was ready,
Ate and drank and found it good.
Rivers, morning-twilight meadows
Alder leaves the wind blows through,
The big cities—none of these
Was I indifferent to.
(In his dreaming, in his prison
Trees and towns appear
He recalls the slimly risen
Moon over the moor.)
Theatre of emotions
Between ourselves, it seems to me a sorry trade
By means of theatre to move
Only the sluggish emotions. Like masseurs
That’s how you seem to me, who work
The fat soft bodies like dough, so to knead
The lard from off the idle. Hastily assembled
Situations are designed to provoke the paying customers to rage
Or pain. The spectator
Becomes voyeur. The overfed
Sit side by side with the hungry.
Feelings aroused like this are muffled and impure
General and out of focus, no less false
Than thoughts may be. Dull blows to the marrow
And the dross of the soul swims to the surface.
Glassy-eyed
Sweaty-browed and with tensed calves
The poisoned spectators follow
Your exhibitionism.
No wonder they buy the tickets
In pairs. And no wonder
They prefer to sit in darkness, out of sight.
On judgement
You artists who, likewise for misery and delight, serve up yourselves
To the judgement of the spectators: be moved from now on
Also to serve up to the judgement of the spectators
The world, such as you portray it.
You must portray what is; but also
When you portray what is, you should hint at
What it could be and is not, but might rather be. For from your imitation
The spectator must learn to deal with what is imitated.
And this learning must be performed with gusto. As an art
So learning must be taught, and dealing with things and people
That too should be taught as an art; for the practise of art is a delight.
Granted, you live in dark times. You see mankind
As the plaything of evil forces
Thrown this way and that. Only the foolish
Live untroubled. He without suspicion
Is already marked down for destruction. What were the earthquakes
Of times long past against the afflictions
That we witness in the cities now? What the harvest failures
Against the famine that rages in the very midst of plenty?
Exclusively because of the increasing disorder . . .
Exclusively because of the increasing disorder
In our cities of class struggle
Some of us, these years, have decided
No longer to speak of harbour towns, snow on the roofs, women
The smell of ripe apples in the cellar, the sensations of the flesh
All that that makes man round and human
But to speak only of the disorder
So to become one-sided, arid, tangled in the business
Of politics and the dry “unworthy” vocabulary
Of dialectical economics
So that this fearful cramped conjunction
Of snowfalls (they’re not just cold, we know that)
Exploitation, flesh deluded by temptation, and class injustice should not induce in us
Endorsement of a world so multifaceted, pleasure
At the contradictions of such a bloody life—
You understand.
Biddi and the sons of the suburbs
When Biddi was still just a half-pint child
His friends wore patched trousers
Swore like the Bishop of Bamberg and
Went fishing apples from out the cellar windows.
He played pickaxe with them by the stockyards:
They bashed a pointed stave into the ground
Then tried to strike it out with another stave
And the weaker was the loser and the stronger was the victor.
One day the sons of the suburbs no longer turned up to the stockyards
They smoked cigarettes and went into the factories
And Biddi put on a collar and went to study medicine
And dissected an arm, ’cause that’s what he was good for.
But on Sunday evenings he met up with his friends and they talked about how
Flameproof painting
Because the First Minister is so flammable
A landscape painter called Max Zaepper has invented a pigment
Which resists all fire, even from incendiary bombs.
And, as the regime intends full 30,000 years
To makes its home amongst fire and sword, its art
Has to be made fit. Following the outlawing of all criticism
And now that it is flameproof
Its art has nothing left to fear. All that it is perhaps lacking is
A flameproof public.
Set on the bench the glittering grenades . . .
Set on the bench the glittering grenades
Draw from your breast the latest poison gas
And let us speak again of oil crusades
As once in August past.
With dismay, however . . .
With dismay, however
Those born after will observe the works
Which, in dark times, gave
Artful form to the unbearable conditions and
Lent to the suffering
Their powerful voice.
Of young Pumm, who always had to laugh
Once there was a little boy
Who laughed and laughed when he caught sight
Of anyone, no matter where, with a self-important air.
His mouth began to slide, his eyes grew wide.
A real reason there was not
(It happened a lot).
When they baptized our little Pumm
In the great cold halls of God
Well, then he laughed, it was all so daft
For the holy water sprinkler, that water sprinkler
It looked so very odd
(In the house of God).
And when little Pumm was sent to school
They hung a picture on the wall
Safe behind glass, our Head of State
And this Head of State, this Head of State
Had laughable hair
(A very strange affair).
When little Pumm went to be an apprentice
Said the baker to Pumm, with a serious face
Work and pray—for that’s the best way
And then he took his coffee, and went to count up.
Well, you’d laugh yourself hoarse
(If you’re Pumm of course).
And when little Pumm went to join the soldiers
The corporal said, Pumm listen here
Now you must go and die, and win some honour thereby.
Oh, his sabre and his speech, the speech and his sabre
They were so very dumb
(Thought Pumm).
When laughter overcame our dear Pumm
They took his rifle away
Stood him against a wall and beat a drum roll
And those airs and graces Pumm saw in their faces
They made him guffaw
(And then nevermore).
The conquest of Austria
In a letter from a Viennese cook to her employers, who were out of town, I read: here
There is much rejoicing, but little
joy. Two airmen
Who flew over Austria when the troops marched in
Said, on their return, one to the other: that went well. And the one
Added: they had it coming, I
Could never stand that lot.
And a newspaper reported: at the border
The people received their invading brothers
Shaking with joy.
Morning twilight
The reveille sang out in the barracks yard
The morning breezes bent the lantern flames.
It was the hour when those damaging dreams swarm
And toss this way and that the browned youths on their pillows;
When, like a bloody eye that flutters and twitches
The lamp casts a red stain against the light of day;
When the soul, under the weight of its unwieldy body
Imitates the struggles between lamp and day.
Like a face in tears, dried by the breeze
The air is full of the shudder of passing things
And man is tired of writing, woman of making love.
The houses, here and there, began to smoke
Women of pleasure, with pallid lids
And opened mouths, slept their stupid slumbers;
Beggarwomen, dragging their cold skinny dugs
Blew on their little fires and blew on their fingers
It was the hour when, in the frost and hardship
Women in labour felt their pain intensify;
Like a sob, choked short by a spumy rush of blood
In the distance a cock’s crow tore the foggy air
A rushing sea of mists bathed the buildings
