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Author’s note<\/em>:\u00a0Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was one of the most influential playwrights of the twentieth century, blending an aspirational communism with anti-fascist politics, while developing a satirical, “epic style” of drama that broke new theatrical ground. Famously, in\u00a0The Threepenny Opera\u00a0<\/i>(1928), Brecht posed the question: “Who is the bigger criminal: he who robs a bank or he who founds one?”<\/p>\n Brecht, who identified as a Marxist and revolutionary writer, produced a rich and wide-spanning body of poetic work, including lyrics of love, landscape and personal memory, anthems of proletarian solidarity, and deep-delving poems of social and civilisational critique.<\/p>\n The sequence below deliberately straddles the line between translation and original tribute. Although I was conscious of the lapse between his life and circumstances and my own, my main concern while writing was to respond to Brecht’s poetry in a way that drew out (without suppressing any one element for the benefit of another) its range, lyric elegance, and radical fire. I may not have succeeded, but I hope that my admiration for his work, at least, is clear.<\/p>\n On a personal note, I’m thankful to Conor Brennan, who some years ago gifted me a copy of\u00a0The Selected Poems of Bertolt Brecht<\/i>, translated by H. R. Hays, which was my first introduction to Brecht the poet.<\/p>\n A Resistance Writer Reflects On His Life<\/strong><\/span> by Ciar\u00e1n O’Rourke<\/em><\/p>\n In the rippling mirror I catch my face: and proclaim their own I was moved by a hatred Author’s note:\u00a0Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was one of the most influential playwrights of the twentieth century, blending an aspirational communism with anti-fascist politics, while developing a satirical, “epic…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":572,"featured_media":13668,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1660],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/572"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
(Variations on poems by Bertolt Brecht, 1898-1956)<\/p>\n
well-fed and water-logged, an exile’s countenance.
Tomorrow’s outcast! That shining place,
where, with the girl who god forgot
and drowned, I’ll no doubt vanish also,
strange to the ways of your bleating world.
~
But I was something once
no time ahead could fathom:
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0a human soul, seduced by need
to paint the boardroom butchers of the age
in lurid colours, my verses shaped
like sleeting fists, my hunger
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0like a storm. I lived in rage
and love in equal measure;
my life knew every texture, had
the beat of living history
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0a-thrum in it. And I worked
(in my way) like all the rest. At dawn,
the miners dragged their boots in song
along the cobbles; my coal-
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 blue fingers smudged
the page in praise.
~
What, today, you call a river
to me was second nature \u2013 gifted,
like the grey boughs donning
wind’s weather
in a rush above me years before,
or the pounding clouds
that clapped the forest doors
for days,
till birds emerged
to shake the clearing after,
and the rains she kissed me under
disappeared forever.
The touched
earth \u2013 volving lovely
down my body \u2013
this, the haunted mist
I breathed involuntarily,
woke to
year by year.
~
My spirit hummed the brightest
in fits of vision built from sense:
when I saw through spinning water-wheels
the village children growing thin,
or when I tuned my pen
to the famished noise of carolling machines.
And so, my last, light-filled request:
to log, if you will, my voice of ink
among their numberless possessions \u2013
the agitators, legislators, the million-
faced and rebel poor, whose words
were sent to the burning marsh,
whose bones were sunk
in a box of zinc.
~
So we come to the hatred
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0of arrogant men,
who, strolling from banquet
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0to feast in their suits,
hector the nation with rations;
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0who promise a reaping
of luck while they’re fat, and let
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0the fruit rot beneath sheeting;
who evict brittle children onto
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0the streets, and wrap them
in data and numbers; who funnel
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0society over a cliff<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0fitness to govern.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0of arrogant men.
~
The people I love are bright and harsh.
Their fingers stitch the velvet coats.
Their bodies lift the singing roads.
They shake the wheat. They shape the loaf.
They carve the skyline named in stone
for the emperor and the boss,
and they always bite the famine-dirt
when their ledgers lodge a loss \u2013
but they know far more than this, oh yes…
as the wave unbolts the ocean
and the slave commands the dawn,
my people’s hands have threshed the wind,
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0their faces creased the sun.
~
What is food for?
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0To clothe the hungry
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0dream with heat.
What do dreams become?
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0A star a stone a fist a mob, to make
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0the richest citizens
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 tremble in their beds.
What are poems for?
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 To fortify the body,
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0to weaponise the mind.
What should we remember?
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Amid the chronicle of cruelties,
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 my yearning to be kind.
Who is this?
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Brecht: so mean, so dry,
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 so stricken, so strung, I could
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 sleep (or march).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"