Real Quick...

Sorry it's been a while since I've updated my supposedly daily blog. There's been some interesting developments I'll be writing about shortly - nothing earth-shattering, just time-consuming. Plus I'm getting ready for a lot of music this weekend: rehearsal Friday, playing two different sets Saturday night, then 8:00 and 5:00 church services.


So I'll get back on schedule as soon as possible. In the meantime, enjoy some wonderful angst courtesy of those amazing Germans. And also courtesy of my wife the awesome librarian who has to instruct me on the fly in the ways of searching online journals. SCORE!

Of Poor B.B.

Bertolt Brecht, translated by Michael Hofmann

   1

   I, Bertolt Brecht, come from the black forests.
   My mother carried me into the cities
   When I was in her belly. And the chill of the forests
   Will be in me till my dying day.

   2

   The asphalt city is my home. Furnished
   From the outset with every sacramental perquisite:
   With newspapers. And tobacco. And brandy.
   Distrustful and idle and contented to the end.

   3

   I am friendly to people. I put on
   A top hat because that's what they do.
   I tell myself: They are animals with a particular smell.
   And I tell myself: What of it, so am I.

   4

   In the morning I like to set a woman or two
   In my empty rocking chairs
   And I look at them insouciantly and I say to them:
   In me you have someone on whom there is no relying.

   5

   Towards evening it's men I gather round about me
   And we address our company as "gentlemen."
   They park their feet on my table
   And say: Things are looking up. And I don't ask: When?

   6

   In the grey pre-dawn the pine trees micturate
   And their parasites, the birds, start to bawl.
   At that hour I empty my glass in the city and throw away
   My cigar end and worriedly go to sleep.

   7

   We have settled, a whimsical tribe,
   In dwellings it pleased us to think of as indestructible
   (In the same spirit we built the tall constructions on the
      island of Manhattan
   And the thin antennae that underwire the Atlantic Ocean).

   8

   Of these cities there will remain only what passed through them,
      the wind.
   The house makes glad the eater: he polishes it off.
   We know we are provisional,
   And that after us will come: really nothing worth mentioning.

   9

   In the coming earthquakes I trust
   I will not let my Virginia go bitter on me,
   I, Bertolt Brecht, removed to the asphalt cities
   From the black forests in my mother in the early times.