........................................................................................ - a weBlog by Snowy and me.

Sunday 9 June 2024

Two Short, Grave, Poems By Bertol Brecht

I Need No Gravestone

But if you need one for me
I would like it to bear these words:
He made suggestions.
We carried them out.
Such an inscription
would honour us all.



The Tombstone Of The Unknown Soldier Of The Revolution

The unknown soldier of the revolution has fallen,
I saw his tombstone in a dream.

It lay in peat bog. It consisted of two boulders.
It bore no inscription. But one of the two
Began to speak.

He who lies here, it said, marched
Not to conquer a foreign land,
but his own.
Nobody knows what his name is.
But the history books give the names
of those who vanquished him.

Because he wanted to live like a human being
he was slaughtered like a savage beast.

His last words were a whisper
For they came from a strangled throat,
but the cold wind carried them everywhere
to be heard by many freezing people. 
          

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