by Tom Kuhn
Listen.
The sighing is answered by the singing of the crickets alarmed
By neither the sighing of the southerly wind nor the ashen sky.
The pine has its tone, the myrtle another, like neither the juniper
Various instruments played by innumerable fingers.
And ourselves we are steeped in the spirit of the wood and living the life of the trees.
And your rapturous face is soft with the rain like a leaf and your
Hair smells of lucent gorse, you creature of the earth.
Listen, listen.
The chords of the airy crickets are deafened, they sink in the sighing
That grows.
Buckow Elegies
In February 1952 Brecht bought some land and a couple of houses in Buckow on the Schermützelsee outside Berlin. He had known from the moment of his return that the life offered him was privileged (see ‘A new house,’ above). Relatively speaking, he was a wealthy man. He used Buckow as a retreat, to write (and could also entertain Käthe Reichel there); but the poems he put together as the Buckow Elegies are an uneasy work. In his retreat he was not at all sealed off from the uprising that started in East Berlin in June 1953, nor from its aftermath. On the contrary, in privileged seclusion he reflected on the failure and the violence, tried to understand their causes and his own responsibility. These are poems of doubt, disappointment, and bad conscience.
We have arranged the ‘Elegies’ not as they appear in the BFA but according to a manuscript note made by Käthe Reichel and presumably authorized by Brecht himself. This is the first time the poems have appeared in that order. And we have taken one liberty: we have placed the quatrain ‘If there were a wind . . .,’ which appears a third of the way through the collection as the BFA orders it, at the head, as a motto or epigraph, after the style of the mottoes of Svendborg Poems.
If there were a wind
I could put up a sail.
If there were no sail
I’d make one of sticks and canvas.
The flower garden
On the lake deep among fir trees and white poplars
Sheltered by walls and bushes, a garden
So wisely planted with each month’s flowers
It is in bloom from March until October.
Here in the early morning, not too often
I sit wishing I may myself at all times
In the various weathers, the good, the bad
Show forth one thing or another that gives pleasure.
The solution
After the uprising of 17 June
On the orders of the Secretary of the Writers’ Union
Leaflets were distributed in the Stalinallee
Which read: that the people
Had forfeited the government’s trust
And only by working twice as hard
Could they win it back. But would it not
Be simpler if the government
Dissolved the people and
Elected another one?
Changing the wheel
I am sitting by the side of the road.
The driver is changing the wheel.
I don’t like where I was.
I don’t like where I am going to.
Why do I watch the changing of the wheel
With impatience?
A bad morning
The white poplar, a famous local beauty
Today an old hag. The lake
A bowl of slops, don’t touch it!
The fuchsias among the snapdragon cheap and showy.
Why?
Last night in a dream I saw fingers pointing at me
As though at a leper. They were worn by work and
They were broken.
There are things you don’t know! I cried.
Knowing I was guilty.
The old ways, still
They slam the plates down
So the soup slops over.
Loud and shrill comes
The command: Feed!
The Prussian eagle
Ramming the grub
Into the little mouths of the young.
Hot day
Hot day. I am sitting in the summer house
With my writing case on my lap. A green rowing boat
Comes through the willows into view. In the stern
A fat nun, heavily dressed. Opposite her
An elderly man in a bathing suit probably a priest
At the oars, rowing with all his might
A child. As in the old days, I think
As in the old days!
The new tongue
Formerly when they spoke with their wives about onions
And once again the shops were empty
They still understood the sighs, the curses, the jokes
By which the unbearable lives
In the depths were lived nonetheless.
Now
They are the rulers and they speak a new tongue
Only they understand: partyshite
It is spoken in a threatening and didactic voice
And it fills the shops—not with onions.
Those who hear partyshite
Lose their food.
Those who speak it
Lose their hearing.
Great times, wasted
I knew that cities were being built
I didn’t go and look.
It’s a matter of statistics, I thought
Not of history.
But what are cities built
Without the wisdom of the people?
Iron
Last night in a dream
I saw a great storm.
It seized the scaffolding
Tore down the laddering
That was made of iron.
But what was made of wood
Bent and held.
Smoke
The little house among trees by the lake
From the chimney smoke is rising
If it weren’t
How sad would be
House, trees and lake.
Eight years ago
There was a time
Everything was different round here then.
The butcher’s wife knows it.
The postman walks too upright.
And what was the electrician?
The one-armed man among the trees
Dripping with sweat he stoops
For the dry twigs. He drives off the midges
By shaking his head. Laboriously
He bundles the firewood between his knees. Groaning
He straightens up and raises his hand to feel
Is it raining. The raised hand
The feared SS man.
Truth unites
Friends, I wish you would know the truth and would speak it!
Not like weary and fleeing Caesars: Bread tomorrow!
But like Lenin: By tomorrow evening
We are done for, unless . . .
As it says in the song:
“Brothers, best that I begin
By telling you what state we’re in:
Very bad. Let us admit
There’s no getting out of it.”
Friends, a robust admission
And a robust UNLESS!
Rowing, conversation
It is evening. Two folding boats
Glide by, a naked
Young man in each. Rowing side by side
They talk. Talking
They row side by side.
Provisions for a purpose
Leaning on their field guns
McCarthy’s sons are distributing lard.
And in an unending procession, on wheels, on foot
Out of innermost Saxony a migrating people.
When the calf is neglected
It nuzzles any hand that will stroke it, even
The hand of its butcher.
On reading a modern Greek poet
In the days when their fall was certain
(On
the walls the dirge had already begun)
The Trojans were straightening bits and pieces
Bits and pieces in the threefold wooden gates, little bits and pieces.
And began to take heart and feel hopeful.
So the Trojans too . . .
Fir trees
In the early morning
The fir trees are copper.
I saw them like that
Half a century ago
Before two world wars
With youthful eyes.
The sky this summer
A bomber flies high over the lake.
In the rowing boats
Children, women, an old man look up. From a distance
They are like starlings opening wide their beaks
For food.
On reading Horace
Not even the Deluge
Lasted forever.
Came a day when its
Black waters subsided.
True, though, not many
Lived to outlast it.
Sounds
Later, in the autumn
Great flocks of rooks will roost in the white poplars
But all summer long I hear
While there are no birds in these parts
Only the sounds of people.
I am content with that.
POEMS BELONGING WITH THE BUCKOW ELEGIES
On reading a Soviet book
I read that taming the Volga
Won’t be an easy task. She will
Summon help from her daughters, the Oka, Kama, Unsha, Vetluga
And her granddaughters, the Chusovaya, the Vyatka.
She will collect all her forces, with the waters of seven thousand tributaries
She will hurl herself in rage against the Stalingrad dam.
She’s an inventive genius, as devilishly wily
As the Greek Odysseus, and she will utilize every fissure
Veer right, pass by on the left, hide herself
Underground—but, so I read, the people of the Soviet Union
Who love her and celebrate her in song have recently
Been studying her and will
By 1958
Have tamed her.
And the black fields of the Caspian lowlands
Arid now, the stepchildren
Will repay them with bread.
The Muses
When the Iron Man thrashes them
The Muses sing louder.
With their black eyes
They gaze at him adoringly, like bitches.
Their backsides twitch with pain
Their pudenda with lust.
The voice of the October storm . . .
The voice of the October storm
Around the little house by the reeds
Seems to me very like my voice
At ease
I lie on the bed and hear
Over the lake and the city
My voice.
The seven lives of literature
Word has got around
That literature is not a flowering mimosa. How often
She has been invited as a goddess and
Treated like a hag. Her masters
Fucked her by night and by day harnessed her to the wooden plough.
Then I was back in Buckow . . .
Then I was back in Buckow
The hilly place by the lake
Poorly protected by books
And the bottle, sky
And water accused me
Of having known the victims.
The dog
My gardener says to me: the dog
Is strong and clever and was bought
To guard the gardens. But you
Have trained him to be nice to people. What
Does he get fed for?
Uncollected Poems 1953–1956
The maid’s song
Yes, I’m well and truly gone on him.
Nothing I have not given him, alas.
All I have he has enjoyed, alas
Till that bitch came by and wanted him.
Has she this? I asked. And that? And that?
But himself, no shame, no decency
He laughs. And now I do know what is what.
She has nothing. But she does have money.
Him and the witch, the Devil take the pair of them!
—Oh if only I were not so gone on him!
So, I’m well and truly gone on you—
Does that mean she’s free to laugh at me?
Tears I’ve shed, oh tears, more than a few
But who says I paid you? Nobody.
Tell the bitch the things she wants to hear now
But do not make her laugh, because if you do
She’ll open wide her gob and put on show
The gold she has to pay for fools like you.
Him and the witch, the Devil take the pair of them!
—Oh if only I were not so gone on him!
O Venice, city of dreams . . .
O Venice, city of dreams
Who make rich the poorest of your children
With the whiteness of your doves
And with the blue of your skies!
O Venice, city of dreams
Who are dying and who have for your children
And for all their golden far niente
Only the sea salt and the figs!
O Venice, city of dreams
Foreigners hurry here and see you dying
They see the doves, they see the skies
And we, who are your children, we inherit.
Spring
A withered bough put forth
Into the light of day
Bestirred itself last night
And bloomed in time for May.
No faith. Having decided
It would do nothing fit
To use or to be looked at
I’d fetched my saw for it.
First calendar song
The war is over
A long darkness
The village hears
The dawn chorus.
The burnt wood
Is planted again
Joyful dancing
In the kindergarten.
In the allotments
Evening dew.
Husband and wife
Are building anew.
The church bell calls
The village together
To have its say
In a new endeavour.
Second calendar song
Not even a hard time
Lasts forever
They suffer worst
Who ask no better.
Crack of a whip
Humming of a saw
The first ox bellows
There in the byre.
He’s not as heavy
As he might be
But through and through
The beast’s healthy.
The fields smell
Ready to sow
This is the new time
Our time, now.
The Department of Literature
As is well known, the Department of Literature allots paper to our Republic’s
Publishing houses, so and so many hundredweight
Of this scarce commodity for works that are welcome.
Welcome
Are works containing ideas
Familiar to the Department of Literature from the newspapers.
This practise
Given the nature of our newspapers
Would surely lead to great savings in paper if
For an idea in our newspapers the Department of Literature
Always allowed only one book. Unfortunately
It allows pretty well all the books to be printed that treat
An idea from the newspapers.
With the result that
For the works of some of our best writers
There is no paper.
Unascertainable errors of the Bureau for the Arts
Invited before a committee of the Academy of the Arts
The most senior officers of the Commission for the Arts
Wished to honour the excellent custom of accusing oneself of a few errors
And murmured that they too
Were indeed guilty of some errors. But when asked
What errors, they had no memory at all
Of any actual errors. Nothing
The Committee reproached them with
Was actually an error. The Commission for the Arts
Had only suppressed things of no value, indeed
Had not even suppressed these, had only not promoted them.
Having thought long and hard about it
They could not recall any actual errors, however
They vigorously insisted
That they had made errors—as the custom required.
The bread of the people
Justice is the bread of the people.
Sometimes there’s plenty of it, sometimes it is scarce.
Sometimes it tastes good, sometimes it tastes bad.
When the bread is scarce, there is hunger.
