Tag Archives: poetry

Week 659: Prayer, by R.S.Thomas

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So, what’s this about Baudelaire’s grave? The reference is to lines in ‘Les Litanies de Satan’, one of the poems in the nineteenth-century French poet’s collection ‘Les Fleurs du Mal’:

‘Fais que mon âme un jour sous l’Arbre de Science
Près de toi se repose…’

‘Grant that my soul one day, under the Tree of Science,
May rest near to you…’

On the face of it, it may seem odd that the Christian priest R.S.Thomas should invoke lines from a controversial poem in praise of Satan, but I think the point is that Thomas had a lifelong interest in reconciling science and religion, or at least in getting them to coexist, and saw Baudelaire as somewhat of a fellow-spirit in this regard.

‘since I sought and failed/to steal from it’. I find this modesty on the part of the poet a little irritating, and feel like saying ‘Oh, come on, man, you must know you’ve knocked out more good poems than a poet may reasonably expect in one lifetime’. But I guess it goes with Thomas’s somewhat dour outlook, and his discontent with his oeuvre was probably quite genuine.

‘wearing the green leaves of time’. I find the image in the last three lines beautiful, though I would be hard put to tease it out fully. I think the suggestion is one of the spirit of poetry as something platonic that does not in essence change over time and yet in each generation finds a new expression in the current actuality.

Prayer

Baudelaire’s grave
not too far
from the tree of science –
Mine, too,
since I sought and failed
to steal from it,
somewhere within sight
of the tree of poetry
that is eternity wearing
the green leaves of time.

R.S.Thomas

Week 658: The Slow Starter, by Louis MacNeice

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Louis MacNeice remains in my view the one among major mid-twentieth century English poets most accessible to the common reader, especially in the collections of shorter lyrics published towards the end of his life, from one of which this week’s poem is taken. In its low-key way it is a masterclass in what can be done with plain, almost prosaic statement: conversational in tone, and with what might be called poetic special effects being reserved for the brilliantly clinching image in the last two lines.

The Slow Starter

A watched clock never moves, they said:
Leave it alone and you’ll grow up.
Nor will the sulking holiday train
Start sooner if you stamp your feet.
   He left the clock to go its way;
   The whistle blew, the train went gay.

Do not press me so, she said;
Leave me alone and I will write
But not just yet, I am sure you know
The problem. Do not count the days.
   He left the calendar alone;
   The postman knocked, no letter came.

O never force the pace, they said;
Leave it alone, you have lots of time,
Your kind of work is none the worse
For slow maturing. Do not rush.
   He took their tip, he took his time,
   And found his time and talent gone.

Oh you have had your chance, It said;
Left it alone and it was one.
Who said a watched clock never moves?
Look at it now. Your chance was I.
   He turned and saw the accusing clock
   Race like a torrent round a rock.

Louis MacNeice

Week 657: From the ‘Völuspá’

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A good deal of what we know about Norse mythology, and in particular about Ragnarök, the Doom of the Gods, that has so haunted the northern imagination, comes from one tenth-century eddic poem, the Völuspá, or Prophecy of the Sibyl.

The text is difficult, probably corrupt in places, with different readings in different manuscripts. I remember watching in some awe one afternoon as my tutor in Old Norse at Cambridge, the great mediaeval scholar Ursula Dronke, at that time engaged on her masterwork ‘The Poetic Edda’, went through another of the Eddic poems amending and reordering at will; it was at that time I made my one and only contribution to world scholarship by supplying her with a cross-reference to Celtic mythology, which in due course she scrupulously acknowledged in a footnote.

The whole poem is quite long; I have selected just the stanzas from its climax which are probably the best-known and which describe the final battle between the gods on one side and the giants and monsters on the other.

I have long been fascinated by the weird complexity of Norse myth, with its cast of gods and giants, elves and dwarves, giant wolves and serpents, dragons and valkyries, and its cosmogony of nine worlds linked by a mighty ash-tree. And I am intrigued by the question of to what extent and in what way was it believed in. Was the whole scheme, maybe, dreamt up by some pre-mediaeval equivalent of Terry Pratchett after a few hornfuls of mead, and did people then subscribe to it because it made for damn good stories and those stories embodied, in however fanciful a way, profound truths about the human condition? Or were Odin, Thor and the rest as literally real to them as today, for example, to many people Jesus and the Buddha are? Hard to tell now: all we know is that the mythology inspired some fine poetry and offers in the form of the heroic ideal a philosophy of courage and resistance to the end which might not say everything but provides as good a basis as most for an outlook on life.

The translation offered is my own. Eddic poetry is a good deal more straightforward in its diction than skaldic poetry (see week 555) but it can still present difficulties by reason of mythical allusions that have become obscure and uncertainties about the verbal register. The temptation is to adopt a poetic and archaic vocabulary which misrepresents the original. Take the phrase ‘áðr veröld steypisk’. I have seen this translated as ‘ere the world waneth’, but the literal meaning of the verb ‘steypask’ is ‘to stumble or fall headlong’, so it’s more like ‘before the world goes splat’. I have steered a middle course with ‘before the world’s ruin’.

From the Völuspá, stanzas 45 to 57

45. Bræðr munu berjask ok at bönum verðask,
munu systrungar sifjum spilla;
hart er í heimi, hórdómr mikill,
skeggöld, skálmöld, skildir ro klofnir,
vindöld, vargöld, áðr veröld steypisk;
mun engi maðr öðrum þyrma.

45. Brethren will fight, and brother slay brother,
Sisters’ sons break kinship’s bonds;
The world grows hard and whoredom great,
An axe-time, a sword-time, shields are cloven,
A wind-time, a wolf-time, before the world’s ruin,
Nor shall any man spare other men.

45. Lines 4 and 5 look like an interpolation. Sisters’ sons: in all Germanic countries the relations between uncle and nephew were felt to be particularly close.]

46. Leika Míms synir, en mjötuðr kyndisk
at inu galla Gjallarhorni;
hátt blæss Heimdallr, horn er á lofti,
hræðask allir á helvegum.

46. The sons of Mimir sport, but doom
Dwells for them in Heimdall’s horn.
Hard he blows, the horn aloft,
And all upon the hell road quake.

46. The sons of Mimir: the reference is unclear. Heimdall: the watchman of the gods, who guards the Bifrost bridge.

47. Skelfr Yggdrasils askr standandi,
ymr it aldna tré, en jötunn losnar;
mælir Óðinn við Míms höfuð
áðr Surtar þann sefi of gleypir.

47. The ancient ash Yggdrasill trembles,
Its high limbs shake, the giant is loose.
Odin speaks with Mimir’s head,
But the kin of Surt shall slay him soon.

47. Yggdrasill: the world tree. The giant: the wolf Fenrir. The head of Mim: this refers to the story that Mimir was sent by the gods as a hostage to the Vanir after their war, and that the Vanir cut off his head and returned it to the gods. Odin embalmed the head, and gave it the power of speech, so that Mimir’s noted wisdom would always be available to him. The kinsman of Surt: the wolf Fenrir, who slays Odin in the final struggle; cf. stanza 53. Surt: the giant who rules the fire-world, Muspellsheim; cf. stanza 52.

48. Hvat er með ásum? Hvat er með alfum?
Gnýr allr Jötunheimr, æsir ro á þingi,
stynja dvergar fyr steindurum,
veggbergs vísir. Vituð ér enn – eða hvat?

48. How fare the gods? How fare the elves?
Giantland groans, and the gods are met.
The dwarves cry out by doors of stone,
The wreakers of rocks. Would you know yet more?

48. Jotunheim: the land of the giants.

49. Geyr nú Garmr mjök fyr Gnipahelli,
festr mun slitna en freki renna;
fjölð veit ek fræða, fram sé ek lengra
um ragna rök römm sigtíva.

49. The hell-hound howls by Gnipahellir,
The fetters burst and the hound runs free.
Much do I know and more I foresee
Of the great gods’ doom, the mighty in fight.

49. Garmr: the monstrous hound that guards the gates of Hel the land of the dead. Gnipahellir: the cave where Garmr is kept chained until his bonds break at Ragnarok.

50. Hrymr ekr austan, hefisk lind fyrir,
snýsk Jörmungandr í jötunmóði;
ormr knýr unnir, en ari hlakkar,
slítr nái niðfölr, Naglfar losnar.

50. From the east comes Hrym with shield on high,
The serpent writhes in giant wrath,
Weltering waves; the eagle feasts
On dead men’s flesh and the corpse-ship sails.

50. Hrym: the leader of the giants, who comes as the helmsman of the ship Naglfar. The serpent: Miðgarthsorm, one of the children of Loki and the giantess Angrboða. The serpent was cast into the sea, where he completely encircles the land. The eagle: the giant Hræsvelg, who sits at the edge of heaven in the form of an eagle, and makes the winds with his wings. Naglfar: the ship which was made out of dead men’s nails to carry the giants to battle.

51. Kjóll ferr austan, koma munu Múspells
of lög lýðir, en Loki stýrir;
fara fíflmegir með freka allir,
þeim er bróðir Býleists í för.

51. East over sea there comes a ship
With the people of Muspell, and Loki steers.
After the wolf the wild men follow,
And with them Byleist’s brother goes.

51. Muspell: the land of the fire giants. The wolf: Fenrir. The brother of Byleist: Loki. No more is known of Byleist.

52. Surtr ferr sunnan með sviga lævi,
skínn af sverði sól valtíva;
grjótbjörg gnata, en gífr rata,
troða halir helveg, en himinn klofnar.

52. From the south comes Surt with a flail of flame,
The sun of the battle-gods shines in his sword,
The mountains fall, the sky is sundered,
As heroes take the road to hell.

52. Surt: the ruler of the fire-world. ‘sviga laevi’: literaaly, the scourge of branches, i.e. fire. This is an unusual case in the Eddic poems of a ‘kenning’, more characteristic of skaldic verse.

53. Þá kemr Hlínar harmr annarr fram,
er Óðinn ferr við ulf vega,
en bani Belja bjartr at Surti;
þá mun Friggjar falla angan.

53. Now Frigg must suffer a second sorrow:
As Odin fares to fight with the wolf
And Beli’s bright slayer battles with Surt,
For now the joy of Frigg must fall.

53. Hlin: another name for Frigg, Odin’s wife. Her first sorrow was the death of her son Balder, and now she is fated now to see her husband slain by the wolf Fenrir. Beli’s slayer: the god Freyr, who killed the giant Beli with his fist. Freyr, who is fighting without his good sword, is killed by Surt. The joy of Frigg: Odin.

54. Geyr nú Garmr mjök fyr Gnipahelli,
festr mun slitna, en freki renna;
fjölð veit ek fræða, fram sé ek lengra
um ragna rök römm sigtíva.

54. The hell-hound howls by Gnipahellir,
The fetters burst and the wolf runs free.
Much do I know and more I foresee
Of the great gods’ doom, the mighty in fight.

54. A repeat of stanza 49.

55. Þá kemr inn mikli mögr Sigföður,
Víðarr, vega at valdýri.
Lætr hann megi Hveðrungs mundum standa
hjör til hjarta, þá er hefnt föður.

55. Now comes Viðar, the Allfather’s scion,
Mighty in battle, against the beast.
He thrusts his sword into Loki’s son
Full to the heart; his father’s avenged.

55. Sigföður: the Father of Victory i.e. Odin. Viðar is his son, known as the silent god, and famed for his strength. Loki’s son: Fenrir.

56. Þá kemr inn mæri mögr Hlóðynjar, gengr Óðins
sonr við orm vega, drepr af móði Miðgarðs véurr,
munu halir allir heimstöð ryðja; gengr fet níu
Fjörgynjar burr neppr frá naðri níðs ókvíðnum.

56. Then comes great Thor, the son of Odin,
Protector of earth; he slays the snake.
Men flee their homes; he takes nine steps,
Vanquished by venom, he dies undismayed.

56. Hlóðyn: another name for Jorth (‘Earth’), Thor’s mother; his father was Odin. The snake: The Midgard serpent.

57. Sól tér sortna, sígr fold í mar,
hverfa af himni heiðar stjörnur;
geisar eimi ok aldrnari,
leikr hár hiti við himin sjalfan.

57. The sun turns black, earth sinks in sea,
The bright stars vanish from the sky.
A fiery reek devours the all-feeder,
The heat takes hold of heaven itself.

57. The all-feeder i.e. the earth that nourishes all.

Week 656: Journal, by David Sutton

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My eighty-first birthday this week. Ran my birthday mile in 8 minutes 27 seconds – disappointing but at least that’s ten seconds faster than last year’s pathetic effort. Extrapolating this improvement in a way that some may find questionable, I calculate that I should be down to a respectable four minutes by the time I am a hundred and eight. Watch this space.

Meanwhile I thought that as it’s my birthday week I might be excused for offering a poem of my own, a meditation on what is lost with age, and what can still be kept.

Journal

I write in my journal, ‘Thrushes in the lane,
A soft wind, and the blackthorn petals falling.’
There would have been much more when I was young:
Each scent of earth, each bird and flower of spring,
But youth is gone, I cannot visit again
The adventure of the blackbird’s first song.

And once, I might have wanted to share such words
But now it seems enough that they are for me,
And in time, if time allows, will quicken this day,
Since love, in the end, needs little for memory,
But makes of petals, soft winds, singing birds,
Its momentary, everlasting stay.

David Sutton

Week 655: From ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’, by Andrew Marvell

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When it comes to the English Civil War I incline to the view of those eminent historians Messrs Sellar and Yeatman that the Cavaliers were romantic but wrong and the Roundheads were repulsive but right. I still feel it was a pity about King Charles I though. In July 1647 he was rather comfortably imprisoned for a few weeks at Caversham and used to visit Hardwick House, just along the Thames from Mapledurham, which is quite near where I live, and from there call in to a local pub at nearby Collins End to play bowls. I think of him making his way up through the woods in the light summer evenings, perhaps pausing to look back wistfully on the fine view he would shortly never see again, down across broad paddocks to the shining river beyond.

If only he hadn’t felt so entitled… it is easy to imagine him in our times, giving a TV interview, completely misjudging the mood of the room and insisting to the end on his divine right to be a complete wally. So where he might, I suppose, have gone into a peaceable exile, instead he got the chop. But at least by all accounts he met his end with considerable dignity, as celebrated by Andrew Marvell in this week’s piece, which is an extract from a longer poem ostensibly in praise of Oliver Cromwell, the subject of the opening lines, but which is, to say the least, ambivalent about the execution of the king and gives him due credit for his behaviour on the scaffold.

Hampton: Charles was for a time imprisoned at Hampton Court, where Cromwell visited him many times to discuss ways in which the dispute between the King and Parliament might be resolved, but received no cooperation from the King.

Carisbrooke: a castle on the Isle of Wight to which Charles was transferred after an attempted escape from Hampton Court.

From ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’

What field of all the civil wars
Where his were not the deepest scars?
    And Hampton shows what part
    He had of wiser art,

Where, twining subtle fears with hope,
He wove a net of such a scope
    That Charles himself might chase
    To Carisbrooke’s narrow case,

That thence the royal actor borne
The tragic scaffold might adorn,
    While round the armed bands
    Did clap their bloody hands.

He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene,
    But with his keener eye
    The axe’s edge did try;

Nor call’d the gods with vulgar spite
To vindicate his helpless right,
    But bowed his comely head
    Down as upon a bed.

This was that memorable hour
Which first assur’d the forced pow’r.

Andrew Marvell

Week 654: Walls, by Ted Hughes

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This week’s piece makes an interesting comparison with Norman Nicholson’s poem on the same theme (see week 136). I like both poems very much, but Norman’s is more concerned with conjuring up the walls themselves, whereas Ted’s is more about the anonymous lives that went into their making. That image of the faces and palms of the hands cooling in the slow fire of sleep is wonderfully tactile.

Walls

What callussed speech rubbed its edges
Soft and hard again and soft
Again fitting these syllables

To the long swell of land, in the long
Press of weather? Eyes that closed
To gaze at grass-points and gritty chippings.

Spines that were into a bowed
Enslavement, the small freedom of raising
Endless memorials to the labour

Buried in them. Faces
Lifted at the day’s end
Like the palms of the hands

To cool in the slow fire of sleep.
A slow fire of wind
Has erased their bodies and names.

Their lives went into the enclosures
Like manure. Embraced these slopes
Like summer cloud-shadows. Left

This harvest of long cemeteries

Ted Hughes

Week 653: Der Panther, by Rainer Maria Rilke

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This week one of Rainer Maria Rilke’s most famous shorter poems. It exemplifies his poetic theory of empathic identification with the object of his vision, combined with the use of precise evocative language. At one level it is certainly about a majestic animal cooped up in a small cage, but clearly it owes its particular renown to a wider resonance, the panther standing equally for so many human lives, trapped in offices or factories, losing over the years any ability to see beyond the imprisoning bars of duty and routine, yet just occasionally half-remembering another world of freedom and joy, a glimpse, quickly extinguished, of how life might have been.

The translation that follows is my own.

Der Panther

im Jardin des Plantes, Paris

Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe
so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält.
Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe
und hinter tausend Stäbe keine Welt.

Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte,
der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht,
ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte,
in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht.

Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille
sich lautlos auf –. Dann geht ein Bild hinein,
geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille —
und hört im Herzen auf zu sein.

Rainer Maria Rilke

The Panther

His gaze, from seeing bars go by, has grown
so weary there is nothing else it sees.
It is as if for him were bars alone,
a thousand bars, and no world beyond these.

His footfalls, soft and supple as they enter
the smallest of small circles, round and round,
are like a sacred dance about a centre
in which a great will stands forever bound.

Just sometimes, as the curtain of a pupil
lifts soundlessly, some image from before
traverses tense unmoving limbs, until
arriving at the heart it is no more.

Week 652: Hard of Hearing, by Norman Nicholson

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What I admire most about the poems of Norman Nicholson (1914-1987; see also weeks 15, 136 and 193) is their wonderful tactility, especially when he is describing the landscapes of his beloved Cumbria with their hills like Black Combe where still one can sense ‘the tremor of old volcanoes/Tense with damped-down fires’.

The poem I have chosen this week is a little different, being concerned with the inner landscape of his growing deafness, which in a virtuoso display of synaesthesia he recasts in terms of losing one’s sight. I wonder if today’s discreet modern hearing aids would have helped him, rather than clunky things like the one I remember my deaf Uncle Fred having in my childhood, and which he was forever fiddling with, never able to get the volume right from one minute to the next. Still, sometimes a poet’s loss is our gain.

Hard of Hearing

The landscape of sound
Grows slowly dimmer.
A hush simmers
Up from the ground.
Words are blurred; vowels
Lose almost all their colour;
The lipped and tongued sharp edges
Are smudged and sponged away,
And in an aural darkness
All voices look alike.

Ears staring
Under the twilight,
I grope and blunder
My way to a meaning.
Through the slithering dusk
Walk stumbling, eyes
Strained to the south-
west linger of day.

For behind gloomed tree-trunks
And in shadowy doorways
Unspeaking faces
Gape blankly about me.
Night ties
Bandages round my ears:
Turns verbs
To Blind Man’s Buff;
Sends me to black
Coventry in my own skull,
Where not one crack
Of light breaks in
From the town’s genial hubbub.

For not from out there
Will come my brightening,
Not from that other dumbness.
Myself is my only
Lamplighter now.
I must illumine my own silence,
Give speech to the blank faces;
If the town won’t talk
Must put words in its mouth.

Norman Nicholson

Week 651: Walking in Autumn, by Frances Horovitz

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This poem by Frances Horovitz (1938-1983; see also weeks 80 and 502) combines acutely observed physical details – the pale leaves gleaming like stranded fish, the hard slippery yellow moons of crab-apples – with an almost mythic conjuration of nightfall, harking back to older times when the darkness was full of fears both real and imagined – reivers and footpads, wights and bogles – and yet, equally, could possess a strange allure. Thus it is that the last lines see the poet and her companion caught in a liminal moment, drawn to towards the ancient securities of light and fire, yet at the same time reluctant to relinquish the experience of night with its atavistic frisson of the unknown. One of her best, I think. 

Walking in Autumn
(for Diana Lodge)

We have overshot the wood.
The track has led us beyond trees
to the tarmac edge. Too late now
at dusk to return a different way,
hazarding barbed wire or an unknown bull.
We turn back onto the darkening path.
Pale under-leaves of whitebeam, alder
gleam at our feet like stranded fish
or Hansel’s stones.
A wren, unseen, churrs alarm:
each tree drains to blackness.
Halfway now, we know
by the leaning crab-apple;
feet crunching into mud
the hard slippery yellow moons.
We hurry without reason
stumbling over roots and stones.
A night creature lurches, cries out,
crashes through brambles.
Skin shrinks inside our clothes;
almost we run
falling through darkness to the wood’s end,
the gate into the sloping field.
Home is lights and woodsmoke, voices –
and, our breath caught, not trembling now,
a strange reluctance to enter within doors.

Frances Horovitz

Week 650: An Die Nachgeborenen, by Bertolt Brecht

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In this poem the German poet Bertolt Brecht (see also week 243) reflects on his experiences in the dark years of the mid twentieth century. I find it to be a bleakly powerful and somewhat guilt-inducing statement. I wonder how he would feel now to see what we, the aftercomers, the Nachgeborenen, have made of the inheritance that he speaks of. Dispirited, perhaps, that the efforts of an entire world towards betterment can still be outweighed at a stroke by the whim of some power-mad dictator. He might also be surprised that conversations about trees have become more important than he could ever have imagined.

The translation that follows is my own.

An Die Nachgeborenen

1

Wirklich, ich lebe in finsteren Zeiten!  

Das arglose Wort ist töricht. Eine glatte Stirn
Deutet auf Unempfindlichkeit hin. Der Lachende
Hat die furchtbare Nachricht
Nur noch nicht empfangen.

Was sind das für Zeiten, wo
Ein Gespräch über Bäume fast ein Verbrechen ist
Weil es ein Schweigen über so viele Untaten einschließt!
Der dort ruhig über die Straße geht
Ist wohl nicht mehr erreichbar für seine Freunde
Die in Not sind?

Es ist wahr: ich verdiene noch meinen Unterhalt
Aber glaubt mir: das ist nur ein Zufall. Nichts
Von dem, was ich tue, berechtigt mich dazu, mich satt zu essen.
Zufällig bin ich verschont. (Wenn mein Glück aussetzt
Bin ich verloren.)

Man sagt mir: iß und trink du! Sei froh, daß du hast!
Aber wie kann ich essen und trinken, wenn
Ich es dem Hungernden entreiße, was ich esse, und
Mein Glas Wasser einem Verdurstenden fehlt?
Und doch esse und trinke ich.

Ich wäre gerne auch weise
In den alten Büchern steht, was weise ist:
Sich aus dem Streit der Welt halten und die kurze Zeit
Ohne Furcht verbringen
Auch ohne Gewalt auskommen
Böses mit Gutem vergelten
Seine Wünsche nicht erfüllen, sondern vergessen
Gilt für weise.
Alles das kann ich nicht:
Wirklich, ich lebe in finsteren Zeiten!

2

In die Städte kam ich zu der Zeit der Unordnung
Als da Hunger herrschte.
Unter die Menschen kam ich zu der Zeit des Aufruhrs
Und ich empörte mich mit ihnen.
So verging meine Zeit
Die auf Erden mir gegeben war.

Mein Essen aß ich zwischen den Schlachten
Schlafen legt ich mich unter die Mörder
Der Liebe pflegte ich achtlos
Und die Natur sah ich ohne Geduld.
So verging meine Zeit
Die auf Erden mir gegeben war.

Die Straßen führten in den Sumpf zu meiner Zeit
Die Sprache verriet mich dem Schlächter
Ich vermochte nur wenig. Aber die Herrschenden
Saßen ohne mich sicherer, das hoffte ich.
So verging meine Zeit
Die auf Erden mir gegeben war.

Die Kräfte waren gering. Das Ziel
Lag in großer Ferne
Es war deutlich sichtbar, wenn auch für mich
Kaum zu erreichen.
So verging meine Zeit
Die auf Erden mir gegeben war.

3

Ihr, die ihr auftauchen werdet aus der Flut
In der wir untergegangen sind
Gedenkt
Wenn ihr von unseren Schwächen sprecht
Auch der finsteren Zeit
Der ihr entronnen seid.

Gingen wir doch, öfter als die Schuhe die Länder wechselnd
Durch die Kriege der Klassen, verzweifelt
Wenn da nur Unrecht war und keine Empörung.

Dabei wissen wir ja:
Auch der Haß gegen die Niedrigkeit
Verzerrt die Züge.
Auch der Zorn über das Unrecht
Macht die Stimme heiser. Ach, wir
Die wir den Boden bereiten wollten für Freundlichkeit
Konnten selber nicht freundlich sein.

Ihr aber, wenn es soweit sein wird
Daß der Mensch dem Menschen ein Helfer ist
Gedenkt unsrer
Mit Nachsicht.

Bertolt Brecht


To Those Who Come After

1

Truly, I live in dark times.

The innocent word is foolish. An unlined forehead
Betokens a lack of feeling. Whoever laughs
Has not yet heard the bad news.

What times are these
When a conversation about trees is almost a crime
Because it leaves unspoken so many wrongs
And those who cross peaceably
To the other side of the street are placing themselves
Beyond the reach of friends who may be in need.

It is true: I still earn my living
And yet, believe me, that is only by chance.
Nothing of what I do entitles me
To eat my fill. It is by chance I am spared.
When my luck runs out I shall be lost.

People tell me: eat and drink, and be glad that you can.
But how can I eat and drink, when what I eat
Is taken from the hungry, when my glass of water
Deprives one who is thirsting? And yet
I eat, and drink.

I wish I could be wise.
The old books tell us, what it is to be wise:
Hold back from the strife of the world,
Spend your brief time without fear and do no violence,
For evil return good,
Seek not to fulfil your desires, but to forget them –
These rhings pass for wisdom.
But this I cannot do:
Truly, I live in dark times!

2

I came into the cities at the time of disorder
When hunger was king.
I came among people at the time of revolt
And I rose up with them.
In this way I passed the time
That was given to me on earth.

I ate my food between battles.
I slept among murderers.
I was careless in my loving
And looked on nature without patience.
In this way I passed the time
That was given to me on earth.

The streets in my time led into the swamp.
Language betrayed me to the slaughterers.
There was little I could do. But those who ruled
Would have sat more securely without me, so I hoped.
In this way I passed the time
That was given to me on earth.

Our powers were small. The goal lay far away
Yet clearly visible, though not to be reached by me.
In this way I passed the time
That was given to me on earth.

3

You, who will one day surface from the flood
That overwhelmed us,
Consider,
When you speak of our weaknesses,
Also the time of darkness
That you have escaped from.

Changing countries more often than we changed our shoes
We went through the class wars, despairing
When there was only injustice without revolt.

And yet we know this also
That hatred even of baseness
Distorts the features
And anger at injustice
Makes the voice hoarse. Oh, we
Who wanted to lay the ground for a friendlier world
Could not ourselves be friendly.

But you, when the time comes at last
When man can be a helper to man
Look back on us
With forbearance.