Jonathan P. Baird

This is one of my favorite Bertolt Brecht poems. I just wanted to share it. It seems especially apropos now.

To those born after

By Bertolt Brecht

Truly I live in dark times!

A trusting word is folly. A smooth brow
A sign of insensitivity. The man who laughs
Has simply not yet heard
The terrifying news

What times are these, when
A conversation about trees is almost a crime
Because it entails a silence about so many misdeeds!
That man calmly crossing the street
Is he not beyond the reach of his friends
Who are in need?

It is true: I still earn a living
But believe me: that is just good fortune. Nothing
That I do gives me the right to eat my fill.
By chance I am spared. (If my luck runs out
I am lost.)

They say to me: eat and drink! Be glad that you have the means! But how can I eat and drink when
It is from the starving that I wrest my food and
My glass of water is snatched from the thirsty?
Yet I do eat and I drink.

I would like to be wise
In ancient books it says what it means to be wise:
To hold yourself above the strife of the world and to live out That brief compass without fear
And to make your way without violence
To repay evil with good
Not to fulfill your desires, but to forget them
Such things are accounted wise.
But all of this I cannot do:
Truly, I live in dark times!

2.
I came into the cities at a time of disorder
When hunger was ascendant.
I came amongst mankind at a time of uprising
And I rose up with them.
Thus the days passed
Granted to me on this earth.

I ate my meals between battles
I laid myself down to sleep with the murderers
I made love heedlessly
And I looked upon nature with impatience.
Thus the days passed
Granted to me on this earth.

All roads led into the fire in my time
My tongue betrayed me to the butchers
There was little I could do. But the powerful
Would sit more securely without me, that was my hope.
Thus the days passed
Granted to me on this earth.

Our powers were feeble. The goal
Lay far in the distance
It was clearly visible even if, for me
Hardly attainable.
Thus the days passed
Granted to me on this earth.

3.
You who will emerge again from the flood
In which we have gone under
Think
When you speak of our faults
Of the dark times
Which you have escaped.

For we went, changing countries more often than our shoes
Through the wars of the classes, despairing
When there was injustice only, and no indignation.

And yet we know:
Hatred, even of meanness
Makes you ugly.
Anger, even at injustice
Makes your voice hoarse. Oh, we
Who wanted to prepare the land for friendliness
Could not ourselves be friendly.

You, however, when the time comes
When mankind is a helper unto mankind
Think on us
With forbearance.