by Tom Kuhn
On Kleist’s play The Prince of Homburg
Fake garden in the sands of the border country.
Ghosts and visions in the night of Prussian blue.
By the fear of death brought to your knees, O you
The warrior-lackey-hero in epitome
They broke your backbone with the laurel rod.
You won the victory but ignored your orders.
So Nike eludes you. The Elector’s smug enforcers
Fetch you away into the stocks instead.
So we behold him who had disobeyed
By the fear of death now cleansed and clarified
The sweat of death cold on his laurelled brows.
He has his sword still but it is in pieces.
He is not dead but flat on his back he lies
In the dust with all of Brandenburg’s enemies.
Sonnet on the legacy
In the room with me, their guns across their knees,
When they saw me writing out things from old books
They followed my doing with sad and sullen looks:
Are you taking lessons from our enemies?
Yes, I answered. They know how to write.
Write lies, they said, write lies, indeed they do.
I liked this setting me straight.
They rose to leave. In haste I said: Don’t go.
These are the people who – – –
Who cut the loaf thin when they cut for us
And counsel those who beat the people: Do!
What can you learn from them? I said: To write.
Write what? I answered: What you said:
They cut the bread thin when they cut for you.
On the death of the poet Thomas Otway
The author of that play ‘Venice preserv’d’
Ate himself, I hear, to an early grave
Sitting in a filthy liquor dive
Full of fame, yet otherwise deprived.
He begged a shilling from a fan, I hear
Who gave instead a sovereign to the poet
And so he bought a sandwich with his beer
Which proved too much for his unpractised gullet
The poor man choked and died on his repast.
But wealthy Pope is swift to contradict
In fact his treasured colleague had been sick
He died from a heavy cold and nothing more.
That’s comforting. And surely Pope knows best
For Johnson says that Pope lived right next door.
On inductive love
For Francis Bacon who introduced the inductive method in the natural sciences.
So Francis Bacon used inductive reason.
Let’s introduce it in our love lives too.
Perhaps we’ll find that when I come to you:
We rather cover up and keep the sheets on.
And when my hand reaches and finds your breast
Say: is that good? If only we could know!
Perhaps you like it there, but not below?
Or perhaps my hand between your legs is best?
In this experiment the last word will
Neither by lust nor its denial be spoken
For pleasure must be given too, and taken
And pleasure in desire may overspill.
If she allows her furrow to be ploughed
Then not to plough must also be allowed.
When I’d reported to the couple, thus . . .
The Augsburger walks with Dante through the hell of the departed. He addresses the inconsolable and reports to them that on earth some things have changed.
When I’d reported to the couple thus
That up there no one murders now for gain
Since no one owns a thing, the faithless spouse
Who’d beguiled that woman so improperly
Lifted his hand, now tied to hers by chains
And looked at her and turned perplexed to me
So no one steals, if there’s no property?
I shook my head. And as their hands just touched
I saw a blush suffuse the woman’s cheeks.
He saw it too and cried, She hasn’t once
Shown so much since the day she was seduced!
And murmuring, Then there’s no abstinence?
They moved off swiftly. And the ties that fused
Them tight were of no weight or consequence.
Uncollected Poems
1939–1940
In the first of the uncollected poems below Brecht speaks of these years as a “bad time for poetry” and complains again of the loss of traditional “lyric” sensitivities entailed by the political brutalities of his time. It is a repeated refrain. In fact there is a rich range of poems here, especially from these last European years: political poems of course, but also poems for friends, poems on and for the theater, more signs of engagement with tradition (the variations on Greek epigrams, for example), and a number of moving reflections on nature: a world and its values under threat.
Bad time for poetry
So I know: only the happy man
Is well loved. His voice
We hear with pleasure. His face is fair.
The crippled tree in the yard
Points to the poor ground, yet
Passers-by curse it a cripple
Justly.
The green skiffs and the dancing sails of the sound
I see them not. Of all that
I see only the fishermen’s torn string-nets.
Why do I speak only of
The forty-year-old cottager who walks so bent?
The young girls’ breasts
Are as warm as they ever were.
A rhyme in my song
Would seem almost wanton.
Inside me contend
Enthusiasm at the blossoming apple tree
And horror at the housepainter’s speeches.
But only the latter
Drives me to write.
Nature poems 1
(Svendborg)
Through the window, the twelve square panes
I see a knotted pear tree with hanging boughs
On an uneven lawn strewn with straw
It borders a tract of well-turned soil
Planted with bushes and low trees.
Behind the hedge there, bare now in the winter
Runs the path, bordered by a fence
Of knee-high white painted pickets: just a metre beyond that
Stands a small house with two windows in green wooden frames
And a tiled roof, as high as the wall.
The wall is neatly whitewashed, and the couple of metres of wall
That extend the house to one side, a later addition
Are neatly whitewashed too. Just as on the left, where the wall goes back a bit
There is a green wooden door in the annex too
And as on the far side of the house already the sound begins
Whose waters stretch out to the right in the mist
With the woodshed and bushes at the shore
The house, one could say, has three ways out in all.
That is good for occupants who are against injustice
And whom the police may come to fetch.
Nature poems 2
(Augsburg)
A spring evening in the city outskirts.
The four houses of the estate
Look white in the gloaming.
The workers still sit
At the dark tables in the yard.
They talk of the yellow peril.
A couple of little girls fetch beer
Though the brassy bell of the Ursuline nuns has finished sounding.
In shirtsleeves their fathers lean out over the stone sills.
The neighbours wrap their little peach trees against the house walls
In white towelling against the night frost.
How future ages will judge our writers
1
Those who take their seats on golden chai
rs to write
Will be interrogated about those others who
Wove their robes for them.
Not for their sublime thoughts
Will their books be scanned, but for
Some passing phrase from which one might deduce
Something of the particular nature of those who wove robes—
That will be read intently, for it may contain some trace
Of forebears to be celebrated.
Whole literatures
Written in exquisite prose
Will be searched through for signs
That insurgents lived also, where there was oppression.
Imploring cries to supernatural beings
Will only show that it was those of this world who held sway over their fellows
The precious music of words will bear witness only
That for many there was nothing to eat.
2
But in those future times those will be extolled
Who sat on the bare earth to write
Who sat amongst the lowly
Who sat amongst the rebels.
Those who reported the sufferings of the lowly
Who reported the deeds of the rebels
Artfully. In that noble language
Previously reserved
For the glorification of kings.
Their accounts of the grievances and their exhortations
Will bear still the thumbprint
Of the lowly. For it was to these
That they were relayed, and they
Carried them further under their sweat-stained shirts
Through the police cordon and
To their own kind.
Yes, there will be a time, when
These, the clever, friendly ones
The enraged and the hopeful
Who sat on the bare earth to write
Who sat surrounded by the lowly and the rebels
Will be extolled for all to see.
Are the people infallible?
1
My teacher
My great and friendly teacher
Has been shot dead, condemned by a people’s court.
As a spy. His name is condemned.
His books are destroyed. Even to speak of him
Raises suspicion, people fall silent at the mention of his name.
But what if we suppose he is innocent?
2
The sons of the people have found him guilty.
The kolkhozes and factories of the workers
The most heroic institutions in the world
Have recognized in him an enemy.
No voice was raised in his defence.
But what if we suppose he is innocent?
3
The people have many enemies.
In the highest offices
There are enemies. In the most useful laboratories
There are enemies. They are constructing
Canals and dams for the good of whole continents, and the canals
Silt up and the dams
Give way. The director must be shot.
But what if we suppose he is innocent?
4
The enemy walks abroad in disguise.
Pulls a worker’s cap over his face. His friends
Know him as a hard worker. His wife
Shows his shoes with their holes
Worn through in the service of the people.
And he is nonetheless an enemy. Was my teacher such an enemy?
What if we suppose he is innocent?
5
To talk about the enemies who get to sit in the people’s courts
Is dangerous, for the courts depend on their reputation.
To demand the papers on which proofs of guilt are set down clearly in black and white
Is misguided, for there may well not be such papers.
Criminals brandish the proofs of their innocence
The innocent often have no proof.
Is it best, then, to be silent?
What if we suppose he is innocent?
6
That which is built by five thousand, can be destroyed by just one.
And amongst fifty who are condemned
One may be innocent.
What if we suppose he is innocent?
7
If we suppose he is innocent
How will he go to his death?
A proletarian mother’s speech to her sons at the outbreak of war
Now that you are on your way to carry out
Your masters’ bloody business, in front
The enemy’s artillery, behind
The officers’ handguns, do not forget this one thing:
Your masters’ defeat
Is not your defeat. Their victory also is
Not your victory.
Report of one who failed
When he who had failed came to our island
He came like one who has reached his goal.
I almost think: seeing us
Who had rushed to his aid
He at once felt our trials with us.
From the very beginning
He concerned himself only with our affairs.
From the experience of his own shipwreck
He instructed us how to sail. He even
Taught us courage. He spoke of the stormy waters
With great respect, no doubt because
They had got the better of a man such as himself. Of course
In the process, they had revealed many of their tricks. This
Knowledge would make of us, his pupils
Better men. And because he missed certain foods
He worked to improve our cooking.
Although he was evidently dissatisfied with himself
He never slackened in his dissatisfaction with all the conditions
Around him and around us. But not once
In the whole time he was with us
Did we hear him complain about others, other than himself.
He died of an old wound. Lying on his back, he was still
Trying out a new knot for our fishing nets. And so
He died learning.
The emigrant’s lament
Like you, I’ve earned and I’ve enjoyed my bread
I’m a doctor, or at least: that’s what I used to be.
The shape of my nose, the hair upon my head
Were enough: they took my roof and bread from me.
The woman whom I slept with seven years
My cheek against her cheek, my hand between her knees
In court reproached me loudly for my hair
For it was black—so she was rid of me.
But I ran on in darkness through the wood
(The wrong mother bore and raised me—to my cost)
To seek a land where they might let us be.
Yet when I asked for cover or for food
Time and again they called me shameless, chided me.
I am not shameless: but I am lost.
Song of the god of good fortune
dedicated to M.S.
Friends, when I come to cast the dice
Well may you see me shake
For the bad man only needs strong nerves
But the pure of heart need luck.
You know how it is in my line of business
We’ll have to hurry it along
Stretch out your hands: in a clenched fist
I can’t dispense a thing.
My eyesight’s failing and I’ve often
Brought my gifts to the wrong man
Wine and bread and meat
All of it down the pan.
I strain and labour till I sweat
But nothing, it seems, is enough
I exercise my sharpest wit
But still the man won’t laugh.
Between you and me, I favour
The more unruly bastards.
Grinning, I give them a rotten egg
And so discov
er my master.
Oh believe me, I’m happy to supply
A ship, and not just a haven.
Friends, don’t just abolish the bosses
Also end the slavery!
Friends, I’ll make a game of your suffering
And elegant scars from your wounds.
Oh, it’s the shameless clients
They’re my favourite ones.
Friends, I am your cut-price god
There are lot of pricey ones, you’ll see!
Offer up the juiciest droppings to them
The vinegar’s good for me!
Fortress Europe
Europe is Hitler’s fortress
Goebbels assures every child it’s so
Yet where has there ever been a fortress
Where the enemies aren’t only on the out—
But on the inside too?
The consequences of playing safe
I hear you mean
To turn your car around in the same place
Where you turned it once before. There
The ground was firm.
Don’t do it! Just think
When you turned your car before
You made furrows in the ground. Now
Your car will get stuck.
Swedish landscape
Under the grey pines a wreck of a house.
Amidst the rubble a white painted chest.
