I
Truly I live in dark times!
Frank speech is naïve. A smooth forehead
Suggests insensitivity. The man who laughs
Has simply not yet heard
The terrible news.
What kind of times are these, when
To talk about trees is almost a crime
Because it implies silence about so many horrors?
When the man over there calmly crossing the street
Is already perhaps beyond the reach of his friends
Who are in need?
It’s true that I still earn my daily bread
But, believe me, that’s only an accident. Nothing
I do gives me the right to eat my fill.
By chance I
They say to me: Eat and drink! Be glad you have it!
But how can I eat and drink if I snatch what I eat
From the starving
And my glass of water belongs to someone dying of thirst?
And yet I eat and drink.
I would also like to be wise.
In the old books it says what wisdom is:
To shun the strife of the world and to live out
Your brief time without fear
Also to get along without violence
To return good for evil
Not to fulfill your desires but to forget them
Is accounted wise.
All this I cannot do.
Truly, I live in dark times.
II
To the cities I came in a time of disorder
That was ruled by hunger.
I sheltered with the people in a time of uproar
And then I joined in their rebellion.
That
I ate my dinners between the battles,
I lay down to sleep among the murderers,
I didn
And for nature
That
The city streets all led to foul swamps in my time,
My speech betrayed me to the butchers.
I could do only little
But without me those that ruled could not sleep so easily:
That
That
Our forces were slight and small,
Our goal lay in the far distance
Clearly in our sights,
If for me myself beyond my reaching.
That
III
You who will come to the surface
From the flood that
Must think, when you speak of our weakness in times of darkness
That you
Days when we were used to changing countries
More often than shoes,
Through the war of the classes despairing
That there was only injustice and no outrage.
Even so we realised
Hatred of oppression still distorts the features,
Anger at injustice still makes voices raised and ugly.
Oh we, who wished to lay for the foundations for peace and friendliness,
Could never be friendly ourselves.
And in the future when no longer
Do human beings still treat themselves as animals,
Look back on us with indulgence.
Wait wtf since when can poetry be good?
Spoken (in German) by Brecht himself and text. Brecht died in 1956. Lived a time in East Germany, the GDR and died in Berlin.
There was a documentary (in german though), which was about Brecht and it had this line:
Poetry has always been good
deleted by creator
Another good one by Brecht
Questions From a Worker Who Reads
Who built Thebes of the 7 gates ? In the books you will read the names of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock ?
And Babylon, many times demolished, Who raised it up so many times ?
In what houses of gold glittering Lima did its builders live ? Where, the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished, did the masons go?
Great Rome is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them ?
Over whom did the Caesars triumph ? Had Byzantium, much praised in song, only palaces for its inhabitants ?
Even in fabled Atlantis, the night that the ocean engulfed it, The drowning still cried out for their slaves.
The young Alexander conquered India. Was he alone ?
Caesar defeated the Gauls. Did he not even have a cook with him ?
Philip of Spain wept when his armada went down. Was he the only one to weep ?
Frederick the 2nd won the 7 Years War. Who else won it ?
Every page a victory. Who cooked the feast for the victors ?
Every 10 years a great man. Who paid the bill ?
So many reports.
So many questions.