The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht

by Tom Kuhn

  The love couldn’t live. The cold came on

  Too cold. And tell me how

  The little trees should blossom

  Under so much snow.

  And there was even a war

  With another troop of children but

  They left off fighting when they saw

  There was no sense in it.

  And while they were still battling

  For a smashed platelayer’s hut

  The story goes one side ran out

  Of things to eat and that

  When the other side heard of this they sent

  Them a sack of spuds because

  The side that has not cannot fight

  As well as the side that has.

  Also there was a court case,

  It proceeded uneasily.

  By the shining light of two candles

  They found the judge guilty.

  And there was even a helping hand

  (Help never hurt anyone).

  A girl in service showed them

  How to bath a little one

  But she only had two hours

  To teach them the things she knew

  Because her master and mistress

  Wanted seeing to.

  And also there was a funeral

  Of a boy with a velvet coat.

  Two Poles and two Germans

  Carried the coffin out.

  Protestants, Catholics, Nazis

  Were there to close the grave

  And a little socialist gave a speech

  On the future of those still alive.

  So there was faith and hope

  And not only bread and meat

  And let nobody blame them for thieving

  Who gave them nothing to eat

  And let nobody blame the poor man

  Who turned them from his door:

  When it’s fifty it’s not self-sacrifice

  You need for them, but flour.

  You come across two or maybe three

  You help them and gladly

  But who can sit them down to eat

  When they are so many?

  In a shelled and rubbled farmhouse

  They found a sack of flour.

  An eleven-year-old tied her apron round

  And baked hour after hour.

  They chopped wood for the oven

  Stirred and kneaded the dough

  But they couldn’t get it to rise because

  None of them knew how.

  The best they could, they were heading south.

  South is where you see

  The sun at noon, it is straight ahead

  When there’s any sun to see.

  They found a wounded soldier

  In a pine wood. There he lay.

  They tended him for seven days

  So he’d show them the way.

  He said they should head for Bilgoray

  There was fever in his wound.

  He died on them on the eighth day

  And they dug him into the ground.

  And of course there were still signposts

  Though muffled under snow

  But all turned round so they didn’t point

  The right way to go.

  And that was for military reasons

  And not in cruel fun

  But how should they find Bilgoray

  In the wrong direction?

  They stood around their little leader.

  Snow filled the air.

  He peered ahead and pointed:

  It must be over there.

  One night they saw a fire.

  They kept away. And then

  Once three tanks went rolling by

  With human beings in.

  And once when they came near a town

  They made a detour round

  And hid by day and walked by night

  Till the town was left behind.

  Where south-east Poland used to be

  The fifty-five children

  Were seen in drifts and driving snow

  And then never again.

  When I close my eyes I see them

  Trekking on and on and on

  From one farmstead to another

  Shelled-to-pieces everyone.

  And above them in the clouds I see

  New larger crowds, they process

  Against the cold winds toilingly

  Homeless, directionless

  Looking for a land of peace

  Without thunder, without the fire

  Not like the land they are coming from

  They are more and more and more

  Vast numbers and in the twilight

  I see that they have become

  The children of every race and clime

  Who want peace and a house and home.

  In Poland that January

  A dog was caught, it had

  A cardboard round its scraggy neck

  With writing on that said:

  Please help us, we are lost.

  We can’t find the way anymore.

  We are fifty-five, the dog will lead

  You to where we are

  And if you can’t come, drive him away

  Don’t shoot at him, he is

  The only living creature

  Who knows the way to us.

  The writing was a child’s.

  Peasants read it aloud.

  That was a year and a half ago.

  The dog hungered and died.

  Uncollected Poems 1941–1942

  The following poems track Brecht’s move to the United States and register the extreme cultural dislocation he felt there. In the first months in California the poet’s voice, for really the first time in his life, falters: the poems are fewer and shorter, there are beginnings of poems, many fragments, disturbed expressions of discomfort and insecurity. In response to very different things—the turning tides of war above all, but also his reading of other literatures, like Arthur Waley’s translations of Chinese poems—new tones and new voices gradually come into his writing.

  The war dog

  We, the last troops left up in the mountains

  Still fighting the butchers and the villains

  Have resolved today in trust and fear

  To send out a dog of war

  With our names, reporting how we stand

  And a cry for help. Although we can’t

  Furnish our location, nor even less

  Directions, all the same we hope the beast

  Will chance upon such as can bring us help

  For there must be on earth such people still.

  And so we said: you must not fail, hound

  Or else our last hope’s lost, if we’re not found.

  Ode to a High Dignitary

  1

  Eminent Vice-Consul, be pleased

  To grant your trembling louse

  The stamp that will make him happy.

  Lofty spirit

  In whose image the gods are made

  Permit your unfathomable thoughts

  To be for one second interrupted.

  Four times

  I have succeeded in advancing into your presence.

  Some few of my words

  Composed in sleepless nights

  I hope have come near you.

  Twice I have had my hair cut on your account

  Not once

  Have I gone to you hatless, always

  I have hidden my shabby cap from your sight.

  You know your few words

  Are scanned for weeks by quaking families

  For sinister indications or even for hints of good fortune:

  Is that why they are so cruel?

  The great trapper is approaching.

  There is a little door

  Out of the trap into the open air. You

  Have the key.

  Will you throw it in to us?

  2

  Fear not, little man behind the desk!

  Your superiors
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br />   Will not give you grief if you give us the stamp.

  During months of inquisition

  You have examined the applicant through and through.

  You know every hair on his head.

  Not one letter of your rules and regulations

  Have you overlooked. Not one single catch question

  Have you omitted. Put an end to the torment now.

  Slap us a little stamp on, your bosses

  Won’t eat you up if you do.

  At the sight of a severed tree root looking like a fallen man

  Fallen. How should I rise up again?

  A bit of rest would do me wonders now.

  And I could wait with living till tomorrow

  If I just knew my enemies were resting too!

  And I saw fields greening . . .

  And I saw fields greening. Saw the pear tree bending

  Down to meet the corn, saw, saw the bright meadows

  In the noonday light. And I heard voices

  Hoarsely whisper: the fields stretch out defenceless.

  And a cloud

  The beam

  See that beam on the hillside now

  Sticking out of the ground, crooked and oh

  Too thick, too thin, too long, too short.

  Truth is, it was once thick enough

  Thin enough, short and long enough

  And with three others was a roof’s support.

  The typhoon

  Fleeing from the housepainter, making for the States

  Suddenly we noticed our little ship lay still

  One whole night and one whole day

  She lay off Luzon in the China Sea.

  Some said because of a typhoon raging in the north

  Others were afraid of German pirate ships.

  All

  Preferred the typhoon to the Germans.

  W.B.

  Even just the change

  Of the seasons

  Recalled betimes

  Would surely have restrained him

  The sight of new faces

  And old ones too

  The advent of new thoughts

  And new difficulties

  To Walter Benjamin who, fleeing from Hitler, took his own life

  At chess, sitting in the pear tree’s shade

  Your favoured tactic was to wear the opponent down

  The enemy who drove you from your books

  Will not be worn down by the likes of us.

  On the suicide of the refugee W.B.

  I hear you have raised your hand against yourself

  Anticipating the slaughterer.

  Eight years banished, observing the rise of the enemy

  Driven at last to a frontier that could not be crossed

  You have, it is said, crossed over one that can.

  Empires fall. Gang leaders

  Stride around like statesmen. The peoples

  Have become invisible under the armaments.

  So the future lies in darkness and the forces of good

  Are weak. You saw all that

  When you destroyed your torturable body.

  The losses

  Fleeing the sinking ship, boarding another sinking

  —Still none new is in sight—I note

  On a scrap of paper the names

  Of those who are no longer around me.

  Little teacher from among the working people

  MARGARETE STEFFIN. The course unfinished

  Flight having exhausted her

  Sickness wasted her, she died, the wise one.

  So also left me the contradictor

  Who knew so much, who was seeking for the new

  WALTER BENJAMIN. At the uncrossable frontier

  Weary of being pursued, he laid himself down.

  He did not wake from his sleep.

  And the constant glad-of-his-life

  KARL KOCH, master in dispute

  Eliminated himself in the stinking city of Rome, outwitting

  The SS at the door.

  And I hear nothing now from

  KASPAR NEHER, the painter. Oh could I at least

  Cross him off the list.

  These death took. Others

  Went from me into life’s hardship

  Or luxury.

  I asked myself: why talk to them?

  I asked myself: why talk to them?

  They buy knowledge to sell it.

  They want to hear where there’s cheap knowledge

  They can sell dear. Why

  Should they want to know

  What speaks against buying and selling?

  They want to be victorious

  They want to know nothing against the victory.

  They don’t want to be oppressed

  They want to oppress.

  They don’t want progress

  Only to get ahead.

  They obey anyone

  Who promises them they can give orders.

  They sacrifice themselves

  So that the sacrificial stone will remain.

  What shall I say to them? I wondered. That

  Is what I shall say to them, I decided.

  Autumn in California

  1

  In my garden

  There are only evergreens. If I want to see autumn

  I drive to my friend’s house in the hills. There

  I can stand for five minutes and see a tree

  Robbed of its leaves and leaves robbed of their trunk.

  2

  I saw a big autumn leaf that the wind

  Was blowing along the street and I thought: difficult

  To calculate the future course of that leaf.

  Thinking about Hell . . .

  Thinking about Hell, my brother Shelley, so I hear

  Supposed it to be a city much like London. I

  Who live not in London but in Los Angeles

  Thinking about Hell, suppose it must be

  Even more like Los Angeles.

  In Hell too

  I do not doubt there are such luxuriant gardens

  With flowers, as big as trees, that admittedly perish at once

  Unless watered with very expensive water. And fruit markets

  With heaps of fruit that, it must be said

  Have neither smell nor taste. And the endless columns of cars

  Lighter than their own shadows, swifter than

  Foolish thoughts, gleaming vehicles in which

  Rosy people coming from nowhere are going nowhere

  And houses, built for the happy and therefore empty

  Even when lived in.

  Not all the houses even in Hell are ugly.

  But the fear of being flung out on the street

  Consumes the dwellers in villas no less than

  The dwellers in the shanties.

  Sonnet of an emigrant

  Hounded from my land now I must seek here

  Some new place where they buy and sell and drink

  And I can try to sell them what I think

  And I must go the old ways now that are

  The ways long trodden smooth by hopeless feet.

  Already going, I still don’t know: to whom?

  Wherever I come they tell me: spell your name!

  Alas, this name was once among the great.

  I should be glad they don’t know who he is

  Who arrives like one with a warrant out for him.

  I doubt they’re desperate for my services

  I have had dealings with their kind already

  May well be there’s a suspicion among them

  I’d not serve them any better than they’d serve me.

  I am the god of fortune . . .

  I am the god of fortune, heretics gather round

  I’m after happiness in this vale of tears

  I’m agitator, dirt-digger, rabble-rouser

  There’s a price, shut the door, on my head if I’m found.

  In view of the circumstances in this city

/>   1

  In view of the circumstances in this city

  I conduct myself so:

  When I enter anywhere I say my name and show

  The papers that establish it with stamps that

  Cannot be forged.

  When I say something I call witnesses for whose trustworthiness

  I have testimonies.

  When I am silent I give my face

  An empty expression, so people can see:

  I am not thinking.

  So

  I permit no one to believe me. I reject

  Every confidence.

  2

  I do this because I know: the circumstances in this city

  Make believing impossible.

  3

  Nonetheless it sometimes happens

  When I’m distracted or preoccupied

  That I am caught out and asked

  If I am not a swindler, have not been lying, am not

  Up to something.

  And I

  Always get confused, talk uncertainly, hush up

  Everything that speaks for me, and instead

  Am ashamed.

  Red carnival

  Before the great masked processions of the red carnival