Translating Brecht

(tr. Michael Hamburger)

All afternoon

a thunderstorm hung on the rooftops,

then broke, in lightning, in torrents.

I stared at lines of cement, lines of glass

with screams inside them, wounds mixed in and limbs,

mine also, who have survived. Carefully, looking

now at the bricks, embattled, now at the dry page,

I heard the word

of a poet expire, or change

to another voice, no longer for us. The oppressed

are oppressed and quiet, the quiet oppressors

talk on the telephone, hatred is courteous, and I too

begin to think I no longer know who's to blame.

Write, I say to myself, hate those

who gently lead into nothingness

the men and women who are your companions

and think they no longer know. Among the enemies' names

write your own too. The thunderstorm,

with its crashing, has passed. To copy

those battles nature's not strong enough. Poetry

changes nothing. Nothing is certain. But write.

From: BrinDin Press Online

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