Two Poems By Bertol Brecht

 The Leavetaking

We Embrace each other,
My hands touch the rich material
Yours touch the shoddy.
The embrace is hasty
You are on your way to a good meal
The executioner's men are after me.
We speak of the weather
And of our enduring friendship.
Anything else would be too bitter.

Emigrant's Lament

I earned my bread and but and ate it just like you.
I am a doctor; or at least I was.
The colour of my hair, shape of my nose
Cost me my home, my bread and butter too.

She who for seven years had slept with me
My hand upon her lap, her face against my face
Took me to court. The cause of my disgrace:
my hair was black. So she got rid of me.

But I escaped at night-time through a wood
(For reasons of my mother's ancestry)
To find a country that would be my host.

Yet when I asked for work it was no good
You are impertinent, they said to me.
I'm not impertinent I said; I'm lost.      

The Democratic Judge

In Los Angeles, before the judge who examines people
who are trying to become citizens of the United States
there came an Italian restaurant keeper.
After grave preparations, hindered, though,
By his ignorance of the new language,
In the test he replied to the question:
What is the 8th Amendment? falteringly: 1492.

Since the law demands that applicants
know the language he was refused.
Returning after three months spent on further studies,
Yet hindered by the new language
He was confronted with the question:
Who was the victorious general in the civil war?
His answer was: 1492 (Given amiably in a loud voice).

Sent away again and returning a third time
He answered a third question:
For how long a term are our presidents elected?
Once more he said: 1492.

Now the judge, who liked the man, realised
that he could not learn the language.
And so at his fourth appearance
The judge gave him the question:
When was America discovered?
And on the strength of his correctly answering 1492
The restaurant keeper was granted his citizenship.

A poem by Bertol Brecht written when he was living in America
and trying to account for the generosity of the place to him,
but not necessarily to less feted people.     

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.            

The Company Of Dogs

Bertol Brecht supposedly said, more or less,
that he wanted a simple tombstone,
one that dogs would want to urinate on.

How dark a dark joke his comment was
depends on us knowing how much
he braced himself to live by conflict
and how much he accepted
that dogs get banned from cemeteries.
 

Listen Whilst You Speak!

Don't say you are right too often, teacher,
Let the students realise it
Don't push the truth:
It's not good for it.
Listen while you speak!    

Pleasures

The first look out of the window in the morning
The old book found again
Enthusiastic faces
Snow, the changes in the seasons
The newspaper
The dog
Dialectics
Taking showers, swimming
Old music
Comfortable shoes
Taking things in
New music
Writing, planting
Travelling
Singing
Being friendly.

This is a 1954 poem by Bertol Brecht (1898 - 1956) that has become the spur for creative writing in German classrooms. 

Listen to a thirty mins radio documentary on the poem made in 2019, Brecht's life at the time of writing this list poem and how the poem became a teaching aid here.    

Intelligence And Mistakes

'Intelligence is less to make no mistakes,
but seeing how quickly
you can make them good.'-Bertol Brecht