布莱希特诗4首
Buckow Elegies
Bertolt Brecht
1. The flower garden
On the lake deep among fir trees and white poplars
Sheltered by walls and bushes, a garden
So wisely planted with each month’s flowers
It is in bloom from March until October.
Here in the early morning, not too often
I sit wishing I may myself at all times
In the various weathers, the good, the bad
Show forth one thing or another that gives pleasure.
2. The old ways, still
They slam the plates down
So the soup slops over.
Loud and shrill comes
The command: Feed!
The Prussian eagle
Ramming the grub
Into the little mouths of the young.
3. Rowing, conversation
It is evening. Two folding boats
Glide by, a naked
Young man in each. Rowing side by side
They talk. Talking
They row side by side.
4. Smoke
The little house among trees by the lake
From the chimney smoke is rising
If it weren’t
How sad would be
House, trees and lake.
5. Hot day
Hot day. I am sitting in the summer house
With my writing case on my lap. A green rowing boat
Comes through the willows into view. In the stern
A fat nun, heavily dressed. Opposite her
An elderly man in a bathing suit probably a priest
At the oars, rowing with all his might
A child. As in the old days, I think
As in the old days!
6. On reading a Soviet book
I read that taming the Volga
Won’t be an easy task. She will
Summon help from her daughters, the Oka, Kama, Unsha, Vetluga
And her granddaughters, the Chusovaya, the Vyatka.
She will collect all her forces, with the waters of seven thousand tributaries
She will hurl herself in rage against the Stalingrad dam.
She’s an inventive genius, as devilishly wily
As the Greek Odysseus, and she will utilize every fissure
Veer right, pass by on the left, hide herself
Underground—but, so I read, the people of the Soviet Union
Who love her and celebrate her in song have recently
Been studying her and will
By 1958
Have tamed her.
And the black fields of the Caspian lowlands
Arid now, the stepchildren
Will repay them with bread.
7. If there were a wind
If there were a wind
I could put up a sail.
If there were no sail
I’d make one of sticks and canvas.
8. Changing the wheel
I am sitting by the side of the road.
The driver is changing the wheel.
I don’t like where I was.
I don’t like where I am going to.
Why do I watch the changing of the wheel
With impatience?
9. The solution
After the uprising of 17 June
On the orders of the Secretary of the Writers’ Union
Leaflets were distributed in the Stalinallee
Which read: that the people
Had forfeited the government’s trust
And only by working twice as hard
Could they win it back. But would it not
Be simpler if the government
Dissolved the people and
Elected another one?
10. A bad morning
The white poplar, a famous local beauty
Today an old hag. The lake
A bowl of slops, don’t touch it!
The fuchsias among the snapdragon cheap and showy.
Why?
Last night in a dream I saw fingers pointing at me
As though at a leper. They were worn by work and
They were broken.
There are things you don’t know! I cried.
Knowing I was guilty.
11. The new tongue
Formerly when they spoke with their wives about onions
And once again the shops were empty
They still understood the sighs, the curses, the jokes
By which the unbearable lives
In the depths were lived nonetheless.
Now
They are the rulers and they speak a new tongue
Only they understand: partyshite
It is spoken in a threatening and didactic voice
And it fills the shops—not with onions.
Those who hear partyshite
Lose their food.
Those who speak it
Lose their hearing.
12. Great times, wasted
I knew that cities were being built
I didn’t go and look.
It’s a matter of statistics, I thought
Not of history.
But what are cities built
Without the wisdom of the people?
13. The one-armed man among the trees
Dripping with sweat he stoops
For the dry twigs. He drives off the midges
By shaking his head. Laboriously
He bundles the firewood between his knees. Groaning
He straightens up and raises his hand to feel
Is it raining. The raised hand
The feared SS man.
14. Provisions for a purpose
Leaning on their field guns
McCarthy’s sons are distributing lard.
And in an unending procession, on wheels, on foot
Out of innermost Saxony a migrating people.
When the calf is neglected
It nuzzles any hand that will stroke it, even
The hand of its butcher.
15. On reading a modern Greek poet
In the days when their fall was certain
(On the walls the dirge had already begun)
The Trojans were straightening bits and pieces
Bits and pieces in the threefold wooden gates, little bits and pieces.
And began to take heart and feel hopeful.
So the Trojans too . . .
16. Fir trees
In the early morning
The fir trees are copper.
I saw them like that
Half a century ago
Before two world wars
With youthful eyes.
17. The sky this summer
A bomber flies high over the lake.
In the rowing boats
Children, women, an old man look up. From a distance
They are like starlings opening wide their beaks
For food.
18. Sounds
Later, in the autumn
Great flocks of rooks will roost in the white poplars
But all summer long I hear
While there are no birds in these parts
Only the sounds of people.
I am content with that.
19. The Muses
When the Iron Man thrashes them
The Muses sing louder.
With their black eyes
They gaze at him adoringly, like bitches.
Their backsides twitch with pain
Their pudenda with lust.
20. Eight years ago
There was a time
Everything was different round here then.
The butcher’s wife knows it.
The postman walks too upright.
And what was the electrician?
21. Iron
Last night in a dream
I saw a great storm.
It seized the scaffolding
Tore down the laddering
That was made of iron.
But what was made of wood
Bent and held.
22. Truth unites
Friends, I wish you would know the truth and would speak it!
Not like weary and fleeing Caesars: Bread tomorrow!
But like Lenin: By tomorrow evening
We are done for, unless . . .
As it says in the song:
“Brothers, best that I begin
By telling you what state we’re in:
Very bad. Let us admit
There’s no getting out of it.”
Friends, a robust admission
And a robust UNLESS!
23. On reading Horace
Not even the Deluge
Lasted forever.
Came a day when its
Black waters subsided.
True, though, not many
Lived to outlast it.
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