by Tom Kuhn
Summer 1942
Day after day
I see the fig trees in the garden
The flushed faces of the dealers, buying lies
The chess pieces on the table in the corner
And the newspapers with the news
Of the bloodbaths in the Union.
Time and again . . .
Time and again
When I walk through their cities
Seeking some livelihood, they say to me:
Show what you’re made of
Lay it on the table
Bring out your wares!
Say something to excite us!
Tell us something of our greatness!
Divine our secret desires!
Show us the way out
Make yourself useful
Bring out your wares!
Stand over on our side, then
You’ll tower over us!
Declare yourself to us, we
Will make you known as the best there is
We can pay, we’ve got the means
No one else can do it
Bring out your wares!
Achieve mastery, by serving us!
Endure, by helping us endure!
Play along with our games, we’ll share the winnings!
Bring out your wares! Be straight with us!
Bring out your wares!
When I look into their festering faces
My hunger dissipates.
Young man on the escalator
In the style of T. S. Eliot
Son of the man who bought this house:
As you descend, take hold the rail
And ponder on his dying wish:
That you should not fail.
If you twist your ankle now
It will take an age to heal
Where before there was a floor
Suddenly a hole.
Can you feel beneath your feet—
Will you fall or will you climb?—
Stairs that slip and slide apart?
For each there is a time.
Stairs go up and stairs go down
Best foot forwards? Best foot back?
What do you reckon, if you fail
Is it down to luck?
Good. You venture that first step.
And at once you see: the lights
And all the din of day are gone
But the stairs flow on and down so many flights!
And they take you down and down.
Have you grasped the matter now?
You on these stairs, son of the man
Who walked on level ground.
When I came back from Saint-Nazaire . . .
When I came back from Saint-Nazaire
I had no knickers on.
Oh, what a fuss there was at once:
Where have your knickers gone?
I said, Just outside Saint-Nazaire
The sky’s too blue, too blue
And the oats stand tall, too tall
And the sky, the sky is too blue.
Brother, now’s the time . . .
Brother, now’s the time
Brother, hold the line
Pass the invisible flag down through the ranks!
In dying no different from when you were living
You’ll not give in, comrade, there’s no forgiving.
Today you’re defeated, the others have won
But the war only ends when the last battle’s done
But the war only ends when the last battle’s done.
Brother, now’s the time
Brother, hold the line
Pass the invisible flag on through the ranks!
Oppression or justice, the balance is shifting
We’ll throw off our chains and the clouds will be lifting.
Today you’re defeated, the others have won
But the war only ends when the last battle’s done
But the war only ends when the last battle’s done.
When I was robbed . . .
When I was robbed in Los Angeles, the city
Where dreams are for sale, I noticed
How I hushed up the theft, perpetrated by a refugee
Like myself, and a reader
Of all my poems, anxious
As if I feared the shame
Might become known, shall we say, in the animal kingdom.
Answer of the practitioner of dialectics when reproached that his prediction of the defeat of Hitler’s armies in the East had not come to pass
In the decades before the deluge
There were smaller inundations. At regular intervals
And in differing degrees
The waters came over the coastal lands. In some regions
The people became so used to the flooding
They lived in great boats, even on dry land.
The art of hydro-engineering made great strides. Never before
Had such immense dams been built as in the period
Before the deluge. In a certain year
The danger of flooding, it was said, was now finally overcome.
The next year
The deluge came. It swept away
All the dams and the dam builders.
Smoke signal
The airman who today adorned the sky
With pale white smoke in lofty brushstrokes saw
How the wind, unfelt down here below, could not
Confuse his characters.
He’s teaching us, I thought, how we too have to write.
In pale white smoke . . .
In pale white smoke with one great arc
An airman inscribes the sky above the four cities.
For a moment there appears
A V for victory. And then
The wind, unfelt below, sweeps through the figure and
Makes of it something strange and muddled
Germany
One night of storm in darkness deep
A sprig burst into flower
In fear I woke from out my sleep
And found that sprig in flower.
The Hitler spook, that bloody spook
Will one day fade away:
The Hitlers, they may come and go
The German Volk will stay.
And Hitler will be chased away
If we just take the strain
And our beloved Germany
Will flower again.
The world reverberates . . .
The world reverberates with the word DEFENCE.
In search of evil intentions
The radio announcers search through the housepainter’s speeches.
The statesmen and generals hunt on the map
For weak points. The munitions ships
Go under on the way to fortifications that have already fallen.
Every day
The red armies are on the offensive.
Under the sign of the tortoise
1
But in the fourth year, out of the bloody flood emerged
A small creature, a tortoise
Carrying in its tiny maw
A dainty olive branch.
2
Before long its image, as drawn by a child
Appeared on the walls of the machine rooms
On the asphalt runways of the bomber yards
On the workbenches of the tank factories.
3
And wherever it showed itself
Little, ungainly, slow
The tanks limped sickly out of the yards
The bombers lifted feebly from the tarmac
The submarines multiplied hesitantly and without enthusiasm:
The creation of all that is sterile and deadly faltered.
4
The heraldic beast of the lower orders took the fight
To the beast of the rulers.
The predatory eagle of the Reich
Was reluctant to leave the nest unattended:
The tortoise devoured
&nbs
p; Those eggs of misery.
Time and again . . .
Time and again in the wild fray
A man stands up and tears from his shirt
Strips to bandage his fellows.
At the coast, from their homes
The Nips make their way into the bare camps.
From the crowds at the roadside
Comes a cry: Spirits up!
It won’t be forever!
To those who laid waste their hamlets
Caught now in the winter offensive
The Soviet peasant women hand out bread:
Take, you unhappy ones!
Song of a German mother
My son, I bought you the jackboots
And the brown shirt as well
But if I’d known then what I now know
I would rather have hanged myself.
My son, when I saw that hand of yours
Lifted in the Hitler salute
I didn’t know the hand that salutes that man
Would dry up like fruit in drought.
My son, and I saw you marching
Away in Hitler’s train
And didn’t know that who goes forth with him
Will never come back again.
I saw you wearing a brown shirt
Never said what I should have said
For I did not know what I now know
That you would wear it dead.
Citizenship exam
To the judge in Los Angeles, who examines those people
Who wish to become citizens of the United States
There came a certain Italian innkeeper. To the question
What the 8th Amendment said, he answered:
1492. And so he was sent away. Returning once more
After three months, he was given a new question: Who
Was the victorious general in the Civil War? His answer:
1492. (In a loud and friendly voice.) Once more dismissed
And returning a third time, he answered
A third question again with: 1492. And now
The judge, who had taken a liking to the man, asked
How he lived, and learnt that work was hard, and so
On the fourth occasion the judge gave him the question:
When
Was America discovered? In recognition of his correct reply
1492, he was granted citizenship.
When the no-season evening . . .
When the no-season evening
Falls between the tower blocks
I feel my insecurity: I need
Five films with good endings
10,000 dollars in hard currency
One or two wars.
Whatever your name . . .
Whatever your name
From whomsoever you flee
Whatever your hopes
Wherever you have lived
Your grave
Shall not lie in Germany.
Reading the newspaper while making tea
Early in the morning in the newspaper I read of the epoch-making plans
Of the pope and kings, of the bankers and oil barons.
Out of the corner of my eye I watch
The pot with water for my tea
How it clouds and begins to simmer, then clears again
And overflowing extinguishes the flame.
The mask of the angry one
On my wall hangs a Japanese carving
Mask of an angry demon, lacquered in gold.
Feelingly I observe
The swollen veins at his temples, hinting
What a great strain it is to be angry.
Did I not sniff danger . . .
Did I not sniff danger
As I slept so long?
Every million years
Something goes wrong!
Chinese Poems
Brecht composed his ‘Chinese Poems’ between 1938 and 1949, and made two collections of them, one in 1938 and one in 1950. We have gathered all those poems here, and have added ‘The Chancellor’s gravel drive,’ which was not included but certainly belongs with them. For all the classical poems Brecht’s source was Arthur Waley’s enormously influential A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems, first published in 1918 and thereafter often reprinted and expanded. Their tone of voice, economy, and pointedly reflective management of rhythm and lineation were very congenial to Brecht as he fashioned his own verse to answer the demands of the worsening times. Brecht took an almost lifelong interest in Chinese culture and literature (see also, for example, ‘Legend of the origin of the book Tao Te Ching’ in Svendborg Poems and ‘For the grave of Li Po’ in Part V).
The friends
If you came riding in a carriage
And I were wearing a peasant’s coat
And one day we happened to meet on the road
You would get out and bow to me.
And if you were selling water
And I came trotting along on horseback
And one day we happened to meet on the road
I would dismount before you.
The big blanket
The Governor, when I asked him what would be needed
To help those in our town who were freezing cold
Answered: a blanket, ten thousand feet long
That would simply cover up all the poor quarters.
The flower market
In the Royal Capital spring is almost over
When the streets fill with carriages and horsemen: the season
Of peonies is here. And we mingle
With the people crowding to the flower market. “Roll up! Roll up!
Choose yourselves this year’s flowers. Various prices.
The more blooms, of course, the higher the price.
These white ones—five pieces of silk.
These red—twenty ells of brocade.
A shade over them against the sun
Against the night frosts pad the baskets with cotton wool.
Sprinkle them with water and cover their roots with mud
And being transplanted they will keep their beauty.”
Unthinkingly every household follows this dear custom.
An old agricultural labourer who had come into town
To call at two or three offices, we saw him
Shaking his head, heard him sighing. Doubtless he was thinking
“One bunch of such flowers
Would pay the taxes on ten poor holdings.”
The politician
As usual to sell my freshly picked herbs
At the market, I went into town.
Since it was still early morning
I stopped for a breather under a plum tree
At the East Gate.
And there I noticed the cloud of dust.
Up the road came a rider.
Face: grey. Expression: hunted. A small crowd
Probably of friends and relatives who at the gate
Distraught and half-asleep had been waiting for him, pressed
Around him to bid him farewell but
He dared not halt. I, in astonishment
Asked the people around me who he was
And what had befallen him. They said
He was a Privy Councillor, one of the great.
Ten thousand a year his remunerations. Only last autumn
Twice daily the Emperor visited him at home. Only yesterday
He supped with the ministers. Today
He is banished to remote Yai-chou.
It is always thus among those who counsel the rulers.
Favour and disgrace between midnight and midday.
Green, green the grass on the eastern outskirts of the city
And through the grass the stony path leads into the hills
The peaceful hills
Under the passing clouds.
The dragon of the muddy black pond
Deep are the waters of the muddy black pond
Black as ink. It is said a very holy dragon
Dwells here. No human eye
Has ever seen him, but beside the pool
A shrine has been built and the authorities
Have established a ritual. A dragon
Doubtless would remain a dragon but human beings
Can make a god of him. The village people
View good harvests and blight
Plagues of locusts and imperial commissions
Taxes and pestilences as works of the very holy dragon. They all
Sacrifice little pigs to him and jugs of wine, just as one of their number
Gifted with second sight, advises.
He also decides what the morning prayers
And the evening hymns shall be.
Hail, Dragon, full of grace!
Dragon victorious
Saviour of the Fatherland, you
Are chosen among dragons and chosen
Among all wines is the wine of sacrifice.
Pieces of meat litter the stones around the pond.
The grass before the shrine is stained with wine.
I do not know how much of his offerings
The dragon eats. But the mice of the undergrowth
And the foxes of the hills are permanently drunk and bloated.
Why are the foxes so lucky?
What have the little pigs done?
That they should be slaughtered year after year only
To feast the foxes? The very holy dragon
