by Tom Kuhn
The gods are driven out in front
The old heathens that were the first to convert to Christianity
And wandered through the oak groves
Murmuring prayers and crossing themselves.
The ones that stood themselves abstractedly in the stone niches
Of medieval churches, everywhere
Where godlike figures were called for.
Those that at the time of the French Revolution
Were the first to pull on the gilded masks of pure reason
And strode over the broken backs of the labouring masses
Power-hungry notions, venerable vampires, thought-gaggers.
Behind them, on foot
Come the meritorious heads of government
The directors of factories and agriculture
Pulling behind them
A little cart with some of
Those without offices.
They in turn are followed, wearing huge masks
With the features of the powerful
By the parodists, who ape their ridiculousness, intent on
Undermining the confidence of the people.
In this country, I hear . . .
1
In this country, I hear, the word “convince”
Has been replaced by the word “sell”. Of the young mother
Who holds the newborn to her breast, they say:
She sells him the milk. The local
Who shows the snow-topped mountains to the stranger
Sells him, so to speak, the landscape. The mission of the President
According to the newspapers, was to sell to the people
The war against the aggressor states. The battle cry
“Down with the crimes of the market!”
Is something, my friends tell me, that I shall have to
Sell to the exploited.
2
The decisive thing in this country, I hear, is success.
The mere intention of butchering my brother
Is not sufficient. Only when I succeed in eating him
Do I have the right to be admired.
3
In this country, I hear, there are happy people
As in other countries. However
It is impossible to find them out, because smiling
That sign of happiness in my hometown
Is simply mandatory here. So they all smile
The deceived and the deceitful, the refreshed
And equally the fatally exhausted. The replete smile
And those who are tortured by hunger dare not
Not smile. Even the dead
Are furnished, at the expense of the bereaved
With a smile.
Self-laceration of the proletariat
(Fragment)
Under the guns of the enemy
I saw them leafing in a book
What the great thinker thought.
The situation
Is not ripe
The master race
So the goebbeld shopkeepers rose up
Reached for their guns and gave their salutes
Although they’d probably lose their lives
At least they’d get a shelf for their boots.
To the German soldiers in the East
1
Brothers, if I were with you now
On the eastern snowfields, if I were one of you
One of you thousands amongst the wagons of steel
I would say, as you say: surely
There must be some way home from here.
But brothers, dear brothers
Under that steel helmet, under my thick skull
I would know what you know: there is
No way home any longer.
On the map in the schoolboy’s atlas
The way to Smolensk is no longer
Than the Führer’s little finger, but
On the snowfields it is further
So far, so much too far.
The snow will not last forever, only until the spring
But a man does not last forever either. He will not
Last till spring.
And so I must die, I know that.
I will die in the bandit’s coat
Die in the shirt of the bloody arsonist.
As one of the many, as one of the thousands
Hunted down as a bandit, slain as an arsonist.
2
Brothers, if I were with you now
If I were plodding with you across the ice wastes
I would ask, as you ask: why
Did I ever come here, where
There is no way that leads back home?
Why did I put on the bandit’s coat?
Why did I pull on the shirt of the arsonist?
It was not out of hunger
It was not out of bloodlust.
Only because I was a hired hand
And because they told me to
I set out, to murder and to burn
And so must now be hunted down
And must now be slain.
3
Because I rampaged into
The peaceful land of peasants and workers
Of the great order, of unceasing construction
Trampling the corn and crushing the farmsteads
Cutting short the lessons in a thousand schools
Breaking up the meetings of the tireless soviets
In order to plunder its workshops, its mills and its grain stores:
That is why I must now die like a rat
Cornered by the peasant farmer.
4
That the face of the earth
Be wiped clean of me
Of scum such as me! That an example be set
Of me, and for all time, that this is how
Bandits and arsonists will be dealt with
And the hired hands of bandits and arsonists.
5
That the mothers say, they have no children
That the children say, they have no fathers
That the mounds of earth lie, disclosing nothing.
6
And I shall never again see
The land from which I came
Not the Bavarian forests, nor the mountains of the south
Not the sea, nor the pastures of Brandenburg, nor the pines
Nor the vineyards by the river in the land of the Franks
Not in the grey of morning, not at noon
And not when evening falls.
Nor the cities, nor the town where I was born
Not the workbenches, nor yet the workroom
Nor the stool.
All of this I shall never see again
And no one who came with me
Will see all this again
And nor will I or you
Hear the voices of the women and the mothers
Or the wind in the chimneys of home
Or the cheerful sounds or the bitter din of the city.
7
Instead, I will die in the middle of my years
The foolish driver of a war machine.
Having learnt nothing, except in the last hour
Unskilled, except in murder
Unmissed, except by the butchers.
And I shall lie under the earth
That I have laid waste
A vermin mourned by no one:
People will breathe easy over the pit where I lie.
For what is it lies interred here?
A hundredweight of flesh in a tank, that will quickly rot.
What is it that’s done away with?
A withered bush, all frozen stiff
A mess they had to shovel away
A bad smell blown on the wind.
8
Brothers, if I were with you now
On the way back from Smolensk
From Smolensk to nowhere.
I would feel what you feel: I always
Knew, under that steel helmet, under my thic
k skull
That evil is not good
That two times two make four
That all those will die who follow him
The bloodstained fool.
Who did not know that the road to Moscow is long
So long, so much too long
And the winter in these eastern lands cold
So cold, so much too cold.
Who did not know how strong is the will of the peasants and workers
To defend their state, their new state, the first of an age
Where man will no longer be a wolf unto man.
9
So when we came, to plunder the cities and the mines
The cities were no longer, except on the map
Nor the mines, but on the lists of war booty.
The earth lay scorched. The factories and barns
Rolled back, and rolling against us
Come one thousand tanks, their crews
The rightful owners of that earth and those cities
So that we will be rooted out, all of us.
10
By the forests, behind the guns
Under the tanks, at the side of the road
In the streets and in the houses
At the hands of the men, of the women, of the children
In the cold, in the night, in hunger.
That we shall all be rooted out
Today or tomorrow or the next day
I and you and the general, all
Who came here to lay hand on
What the hand of man had erected.
11
Because it costs such effort to cultivate the soil
Because it costs such sweat to erect a house
To cut the beams, to draw the plans
To lay the bricks, to cover the roof.
Because it was so tiring, because the hope was so great.
12
That is why we must now be exterminated
All of us who walked with the destroyer, so that they will say:
He destroyed his own people.
For a thousand years there was nothing but laughter
When they laid hand on the works of man
But now the word will go round all the continents:
The foot that trampled the fields of the new tractor drivers
Has withered
The hand that was raised against the work of the new town builders
Has been hacked off.
Song of the Polish Jews in the Soviet Union
In nineteen-forty-one
As Hitler rolled through Sarny
The Reds rescued the Soviets and
Us Jews from the advancing army.
Six months have passed since then
And winter came to our door
And we began to freeze
With our wood walls and bare earth floor.
If the snow keeps falling like this
We said, and we cursed aloud
Oh, what will become of us
In this terrible cold.
And all through those long six months
Hitler was coming nearer
And only the peasant farmers
Said he would never get here.
We said: how should these peasants
Know what lies in the future
In this benighted land
They don’t even know the scripture.
But one day in December
On the radio we heard
That the Reds were now advancing
And Hitler was running scared.
With all his military might
And with Europe at his feet
He had to let us live
And now was in retreat.
But as he turned around
All about was white
He could see neither bridge nor road
He could see only snow and ice.
And when we heard the news
Of what happened on the Moscow road
We hugged those peasant farmers
And they, they laughed out loud.
The snow lay deep and cold
Wherever we looked about
And we said: that’s good for us
Because for him it’s bad.
Mother danced for joy
And spun round faster and faster
And shouted out in glee:
Snow is Hitler’s disaster.
The axe, it snapped in two
The tree was a frozen stone
But father only laughed:
Hitler is done and gone!
Brother shivered and chattered
Beating his little belly
And gurgling happily:
Now Hitler’s cold as well.
We had no water then
The water froze in the well
But we could put up with that:
For Hitler was feeling the chill.
And now we’ll soon be off
Back to our own fair land
By day the snow will guide us
By night the cold cold wind.
And what did the soldier’s wife get?
And what did the soldier’s wife get
From that fine old city of Prague?
From Prague she got the high-heeled shoes
Greetings and news and a pair of high-heeled shoes
That’s what she got from the city of Prague.
And what did the soldier’s wife get
From the Vistula’s banks, from Warsaw?
From Warsaw she got the linen shirt
To go with her skirt, a colourful shirt
That’s what she got from Warsaw.
And what did the soldier’s wife get
From Oslo across the sound?
From Oslo she got a collar of fur
Looks good on her, that collar of fur!
That’s what she got from Oslo on the sound.
And what did the soldier’s wife get
From wealthy old Rotterdam?
From Rotterdam she got the bonnet
With a fine trim on it, a nice Dutch bonnet
That’s what she got from Rotterdam.
And what did the soldier’s wife get
From Brussels in the land of the Belges?
From Brussels she got that rare piece of lace
Now isn’t that nice, such a fine piece of lace
That’s what she got from the land of the Belges.
And what did the soldier’s wife get
From the city of lights, Paree?
From Paris she got the silken gown
The talk of the town, that silken gown
That’s what she got from gay Paree.
And what did the soldier’s wife get
From Libyan Tripoli?
From Tripoli she got the chain
A copper charm on a copper chain
That’s what she got from Tripoli.
And what did the soldier’s wife get
From the cold wide plains of Russia?
From Russia she got the widow’s veil
And a face so pale, to go with the veil
That’s what she got from Russia.
Finnish workers . . .
Finnish workers
Gave him more than one place to sleep and a desk
Writers from the Soviet Union brought him to the ship
And a Jewish laundryman in Los Angeles
Sent him a suit of clothes: the butchers’ enemy
Found friends.
Song of the tank crew
When our dear Führer had established order
In Deutschland with his iron fist
He ordered us by force to spread that order
To every other country on his list.
And off we set in obedience to our leader
Armed and ready—’twas a September day
To fall with lightning speed upon and conquer
A little Polish city in our way.
Soon Europe would see our iron wagons stretching
Blood-sp
attered, from the Volga to the Seine
Our Führer has forged from us a master race
He shakes that iron fist—we’re born again.
So discord waves a white kerchief in greeting
As our wagon takes its bloody course
Deceit throws wide the gates in welcome:
Deceit and discord are become the world’s curse.
And our wagon trundles on in victory
To the Danish strait and on through Flanders’ summer fields
And the peoples who don’t like our new age
Get ground beneath the Führer’s Panzer wheels.
For, yes, our tank was built by Krupp von Bohlen
And Mister Thyssen screwed the wheels on.
Three bankers knew where they could make a profit
And a dozen junkers, they knew how and when.
In the third winter our world-conquering wagon
Has juddered to a halt and won’t go on
A fear befalls us that we’ve come too far now
And will perhaps not see our homes again.
Snow was falling heavily on the Führer’s laurels
As we made our way out East
And now our wagon won’t go any further
In this third year, in the land of the dispossessed.
We were the violated preaching violation
As slaves we rode out, to enslave the world
Now death awaits us to the right, death to the left
The way back home is long, and it is cold.
