by Tom Kuhn
When the bread is bad, there is discontent.
Away with bad justice!
Ignorantly kneaded, baked without love.
Justice without savour, with a grey crust.
Stale justice that comes too late.
When the bread is good and plentiful
The rest of the meal can be forgiven.
There can’t be abundance of everything all at once.
Nourished by the bread of justice
The work can be accomplished
Out of which comes abundance.
Just as our daily bread is necessary
So too is our daily justice necessary.
Indeed: necessary several times a day.
From early till late, at work and enjoying ourselves.
At work which is enjoyable.
In the hard times and in the joyous
The people need the plentiful easily digestible
Daily bread of justice.
The bread of justice being then so important
Say, friends, who shall bake it?
Who bakes the other bread?
Like the other bread
The bread of justice
Must be baked by the people.
Plentiful, easily digestible, daily.
Not meant like that
When from narrow-minded officials
The Academy of the Arts demanded freedom of artistic expression
There was squealing and wailing in the immediate vicinity
But drowning all that out
Came deafening applause
From across the sector border.
Freedom! was the cry. Freedom for the artists!
Freedom all round! Freedom for all!
Freedom for the exploiters! Freedom for the warmongers!
Freedom for the Ruhr cartels! Freedom for Hitler’s generals!
Softly now, my friends.
After the kiss of Judas for the workers
Comes the kiss of Judas for the artists.
The fire-raiser with his bottle of petrol
Approaches the Academy of the Arts
Smirking.
But not to embrace him
Rather to knock the bottle from his filthy hand
Did we ask for elbow room.
Even the narrowest minds
If peace dwells in them
Are more welcome to the arts than the friend of the arts
Who is also a friend of the art of war.
Is every sentence . . . ?
Is every sentence containing the word “worker”
A socialist sentence?
Is every picture in which a worker is depicted
A socialist picture?
Don’t say too often . . .
Don’t say too often that you are right, teacher.
Let the pupil realize it.
Don’t strain the truth too hard:
It won’t endure it.
Listen as you speak.
The sons of Jacob go forth to get food in Egypt
“Father, why do you say nothing?
The mules are pawing to be gone.
We go to exchange handshakes
With your other son.”
“When you’ve given him your hand
Unclasp it quickly it then.
Your brother living in Egypt
Will be an Egyptian.”
“Father, why won’t you smile?
And why these bitter looks?
We shall have sweet wine
And flour for tasty cakes.”
“For a small cask of wine
For a small sack of flour
Many, body and soul
Were bought as dogs of war.”
Bitterly you think of the past . . .
Bitterly you think of the past, once you thought
Joyfully of the future.
How beautiful you were
Drunk on a song!
Tell the man drawing the cart
Tell the man drawing the cart
He’s soon to die
Tell me, who’ll live on
The man who’s sitting in the cart.
Evening approaches.
A handful of rice
And this were a fine day
Drawing to its close
Ballad of the Emperor
As things stand, we shouldn’t be complaining.
Seems we could afford a little laugh
Those who take the strain on our behalf
Show every sign that they’ll continue straining.
All the years it’s been this way
No one ever shouted Ho!
Where precisely does it say
How it’s been it has to stay?
Just maybe, maybe
Things won’t always be just so?
Song of the particularity of the Limesian Tuis
Elsewhere of course it may not be like that
It’s only what I know that I can speak
All men are creatures of their habitat
Perhaps our Tuis here are quite unique.
I can only speak of what I know
All men are creatures of their habitat
But one thing that I’m confident I know:
Our Tuis here are very much like that.
They bicker heatedly like grand pretenders
And marvel how intelligent they are.
Like the emblem bolted to the fender
Which always likes to think it drives the car.
Yes we may still . . .
Yes we may still sit reading our Caesar
In our country garden, early
To trace old Breughel running the gauntlet
With your thumbnail on the edge of the turbine
In the Bavarian hills. Even in the
But they only slaughter the bear
To toast his paws, and fall on the land
Like the neurasthenic sailor on his wife.
Only the key positions are occupied. The continent, robbed of its legends
Is less inhabited than policed.
And the nations entangle themselves, gathered here,
Time and again in their umbilical cords, never severed
That stretch right across the Atlantic.
When the stormwinds fall . . .
When the stormwinds fall upon the reedbeds
The reeds whip themselves.
Like Varus in the Teutoburg marshes
With no path, no map
Those who were supposed to secure the flanks
Sink into the bog.
May there still be many more summer mornings!
But how, yes how?
What kind, what breed are we . . .
What kind, what breed are we!
The oceans, when we found them, were untouched
It was only in our time
We learnt to be fearful of eating fish.
Song of the rivers
This planet on which we humans live
Has ore and coal and plenty of space.
Land and the rivers to water it
To make it a better, more habitable place.
And there are diligent heads here too
And clever hands as well
To struggle and fight to make for us
A place to dwell.
The world has many mighty rivers
So the fruit and crops grow ripe and tall.
But we, the proletariat
Are the most fruitful river of all.
Yes friends, we’re the strongest too
No dam on earth can contain us:
Over the earth we’ll spread out so
None can restrain us.
Old Man Mississippi rages
Drags our cattle down and our fields as well.
To hell with the rabble up above
Who year after year let the river overspill.
We whose fields are flooded
—Forgive and forget? Oh no!—
When once the masters have disappeared
<
br /> We’ll tame the flow.
Our Ganges flows though India
And where it flows the land is rich
And where it flows there’s hunger.
But it won’t always be like this.
We who watered the valleys
Who tended the paddy fields
Know that the day is near when we
Will get our meal.
Our Nile flows through old Egypt’s land
Temples and tombs from the banks look on
Slavery is six thousand years old
And yet, watch out, it will soon be gone.
We who built the houses
Who piled stone on stone
Know the day is not far off
When we move in.
Our beloved China! Our Yangtse!
Where it flows the land is ours to the sea
Where it flows we go happily to work
And the river flows happily.
But the stream was not always ours
A bitter struggle came to a head.
Above the shovel the flag flies proud
And it is red.
Mother Volga, you too beloved!
Lenin, your son, didn’t dither long
And slave chants stopped where the bargees walked
Replaced by the drone of the turbines’ song.
Stalingrad was the name of the town
Where our enemies came to a fall.
And now wherever they lurk, make sure and
Defeat them all.
Our Amazon flows beyond all doubt
In Brazil, but belongs to the USA.
Great and strong, but it does its work
For masters far away.
But one day, and not so very far off
We’ve made this solemn vow
The river will work for us who were born and
Live here now.
To a colleague who stayed in the theatre during the summer break
Across the courtyard I see you go over to the building
Of the dramaturgs and up the steps into the room where
Under Comrade Picasso’s poster, in a blue haze of tobacco smoke
The roles are given out, the texts cut and new rehearsals
Scheduled, while all the time the telephone
Just won’t stop ringing. I follow you
Into the photography rooms too, and see you
Fetching pictures for France, and again
I cross the yard with you and take a look at the stage
Where the builders are now hacking off the annoying corners
To make room for the new semicircle panorama for
Coriolanus, and covering with dust the place where
Azdak’s chair is wont to stand.
Wood
Out of the woods we carried brushwood and trunks
Befuddled by paper
Those branches I no longer know
But into the wood
So long as it’s green, and with the gall
So long as it’s bitter, I am
Minded to write
1954, first half
No serious illness, no serious enemies.
Enough work.
And I got my share of the new potatoes
The cucumbers, the asparagus, the strawberries.
I saw the lilac in Buckow, the marketplace at Bruges
The canals of Amsterdam, Les Halles in Paris.
I enjoyed the friendship of the lovely A.T.
I read the letters of Voltaire and Mao’s essay on contradiction.
I put on the Chalk Circle at the Schiffbauerdamm.
Storm bird
Over grey flat oceans stretching
Clouds fast driven by the wind
Between the clouds above the water
Shoots the herald of the storm
She a lightning bolt of black.
Whips the sea up with her pinions
Shoots, an arrow, to the clouds
Calls—and in that cry the clouds
Hear the passion of the bird.
Zest and appetite are that cry and
Anger, yearning for the storm
And the confidence of victory:
A cry the clouds can understand.
Whereas the seagull, flapping, reeling
Over wave, beneath the cloud
Fears the storm, would rather refuge
In the depths below the waves.
While the diver, he just grumbles.
Pleasure at the storms of life
Is beyond his understanding
Thunder fills his heart with fear.
And the daft pot-bellied penguin
Clings in terror to the cliff.
Alone the petrel, proud storm-herald
Sweeps above the sea’s grey spume.
Ever darker, ever lower
Sink the clouds down to the sea
And the waters rise up singing
Meet the thunder face-to-face.
Then the thunder. And the winds
Descend in fury on the waves
They embrace the foaming pack and
Take them in their mighty arms
Hurl them blindly at the cliffs
Where the white and emerald waters
Break and shatter into beads.
Screaming out, the brave storm-herald
Like a lightning bolt of black
Shoots across the dark clouds massing.
And her wings tear at the foam
Like a demon now she hurtles
Up! And free! The storm’s black demon!
Laughing! Derides the lowering cloud
Sobbing too with simple pleasure.
For she hears, within the thunder
Exhaustion has been massing too.
For she knows, the cloud can never
Never ever occlude the sun.
Wind and thunder. Blue wave mountains
Stand above the ocean’s depths.
Flaming arrows hiss and gutter
In the maelstrom of the sea.
Writhing fire snakes, their reflections
Snuff out in the heaving seas.
Storm! The storm blows wilder, harder!
But our brave bird, stormy petrel
Sways on high between the bolts
Sways above the roaring waters
Cries out, prophet of victory:
Rage you stormwinds! Rage all you will!
Ah, how shall we account . . .
Ah, how shall we account the little rose
So sudden, dark red, young and near
Ah, we had no thought to visit
But when we came, why she was there.
Before she came, she wasn’t awaited
Beyond believing now she’s here.
Ah, reached its end though never started
But isn’t this just how things are?
Do not throw into the battle . . .
1
Do not throw into the battle
General, all your men! Let some
Be outrun by the flesh
And if
One of them should gaze up to the heavens:
Even then
Bring us victory!
2
The evening after the battle
—All was lost—
A soldier showed great Alexander
To keep him for this life
A quail in the bushes.
To value life
The soldier said
A piece of cheese will do.
3
In no particular order
The yellowed early, newly printed books
Driving, flying, planting flowers
The hills of an evening, cities unseen
Men, women.
The greenhouse
Tired from watering the fruit trees
I recently stepped into the small abandoned greenhouse
Where in the shadow of the crumbling canvas
The remains of rare flowers lie.
/> The contraption of wood, cloth and metal trellis
Still stands, a string still holds
The pale parched stalks aloft
The painstaking effort of past days
Still apparent, the work of hands. Over the tented roof
The shadows of the common periwinkles play
They, living from the rain, need no art of men.
As ever, the beautiful, the sensitive
Are no more.
You appear . . .
You appear
To have withdrawn
To the country.
Is that because you’re reading
Virgil’s Georgics
Or do you read those
In the city?
Yesterday morning I adopted
So that I might understand you
The Caesarean pose
Thrust my chin forward
Stretched my jaw
Lifted my shoulders so my neck disappeared.
Between you and me: I found
The pose strenuous
And my breast
Was no more rounded.
E.P. The selection of his gravestone
