after Bertolt
Brecht
Thoughts on
the Duration of Exile
(Gedanken
über die Dauer des Exils, c. 1937)
I.
No pictures
on the wall; why bother?
You’ll be
home soon. You live out of boxes,
renting by
the day. Tomorrow,
that’s when
it will be, tomorrow.
The seedling
that’s rooted in the split
of concrete
will never make a tree.
Anyway,
watering trees is not your job.
You’ll be
packed and gone before then.
Don’t meet
people’s eyes when they pass,
and that
phrase book is dead weight
where you’re
going. When the letter arrives,
you’ll know
its meaning well enough.
You lie on
the bed, staring at the ceiling,
its dirty
curlicues of paint peeling back. They fall
randomly, as
the shadows of birds
among the
tank traps, at the frontier
holding its
breath.
II.
So, you
decided the coat
and picture
need hanging after all.
The pamphlets
occupy your days.
Lately
though, you’ve noticed
a drift in
concentration the longer you’re away,
and outside
in the yard, that chestnut tree
is tall enough
for shade.
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