from Blackwater Quartet, selection 51

after Bertolt Brecht

From a Reader, for Those Who Live in Cities

(Aus einem Lesebuch für Städtebewohner, 1926-1927)

1

Your pals wave good riddance, the platform

shrinking as your train makes distance, your coat

thin as the wind and the room a city room

with no address for anyone to find,

inventing yourself dead

and your ghost invisible.

Expect nothing of strangers,

of your parents in the street, passing you unnoticed,

a stranger passing strangers looking down,

the Homburg they gave you in another life

hiding your face

and your ghost invisible.

Eat the dead animal, enough and more.

In any chair in any house sit artfully,

and know the number of steps

from the table to the door. Take the door number

with you when you go. Remember your hat, outside the rain

and your ghost invisible.

Make each word you speak your last,

a smut of yellow light you say will do,

enough for now and nothing signed, the picture frame

still waiting for opinions, and nothing

remarkable and no one to meet

and your ghost invisible.

Let others get on with dying,

name the stones, determine dates, yours

elsewhere, a death beyond ceremony,

and because you have disappeared

there is nothing to discover, your absence

and your ghost invisible.

2

One too many.

Suddenly you realise you are the one

too many, a spare with no expectations,

but the others chat comfortably,

still unaware of your lost hopes.

You disregard

the niceties of the conversation, finishing

sentences we began, all the while

looking for the word, the sentence pause

to let you leave unobserved.

Only then do we notice you are standing,

only you standing, only then we see through

your temper to escape (stay, stay, we insist). Too late

you sit down again. We have seen your lost hopes.

We have seen you surplus to your own life.

Another hour sitting here, the others

catch each other’s glances

avoiding yours. Everyone knows now,

and then we think it must have been so

always. We think, does he know?

When I tell you of your failings

please understand

it’s for your own good. Take it easy,

put down the knife, have a drink. Somebody

has to tell you, after all.

No good blaming me

(as if you could remember why you came),

maybe the world was bad from the first.

Just keeping quiet about it

is hard enough without your song and dance.

Everyone here is here

because they fit, room enough and no more.

How can this be measured, we ask,

the world so full of disappointments,

so overcrowded.

3

We like it here, in fact

everything here is to our liking,

your house, the stewpot on the stove

bubbling away. We like it so well

we see no reason for you to stay,

a chimney smoke soon gone.

After all, what are neighbours for?

Be warned though, all your hanging around

saying this is mine or that is mine.

Who do you think you are, your wife

making a scene? The authorities will decide

whose papers are in order.

The bricks on your house will be scrubbed,

and they will say the city

changed for the better. A year from now

they will say, we heard he died, and all the lies

we told about you will be believed, and if

the telephone rings we will tell them wrong number.

4

What I see in the glass

is me but not quite. I see

sleepless nights. I see

what happens

when your man is no good.

If I catch myself singing

I think, who’s a cheerful girl then,

or, there’s roses in your cheeks.

There’s not a pinch on my hips

that doesn’t belong. The trouble I take

avoiding exertion

is worth it. Just look at that skin tone.

Such a careful diet, bird portions;

it’s a slow thing, waiting to be loved,

always before me, hanging in the air

somewhere, neither here nor there.

5

They scraped me off their shoes,

nothing lower, nothing weaker,

more treacherous or degraded, but then

not everyone finds it easy, and one day

it occurs to me nothing worse to come must mean

better times ahead. I think to myself

dust yourself off. I think,

my turn now.

I stayed drunk for so long

I forgot walking, the direction anywhere,

then when I remembered who made my low life low,

I quit the booze cold.

It was hard, eating snow

to stay alive, and the rat baits

left me thinner than I remembered,

and let me tell you

I was shocked at my reflection

in the glass, my bony

bedspread-pattern body’s crazy angles.

I guess low any longer

would’ve been the end of me.

At first they had me in

for syphilis. Dose for dose

they tried purging me with arsenic,

but after my low life, even the tubes

pulling pus from my side

were of little consequence, and who

would credit a woman like me

still turning men’s heads,

that crazy take-me look?

I call that a start.

Any man I choose I choose

for that little something special, that

little extra something just for me,

and I never went without. Now though

the feeling fills or fades, but then everybody

has their ups and downs.

From now on,

I choose the ups.

I still call my enemy my enemy.

When a man looks at her

and not me, the cow

hears what I say. Maybe in a year

I can get over it.

Well, maybe I can.

You scrape me off your shoe,

but now it’s you

who belong to me, because I am the future

I will teach you to believe in,

the way you believe

the dressed joints of mortar

make the city of your dreams.

6

He had that cocky walk, stopping

at every shop window, looking in

as if his looking in made things happen,

his hat set rakish but nobody was fooled.

Everybody knew his number was up.

His friends have heard it all before,

and cross the street now they see him coming.

He says he knows the score. He’ll tell

the landlord what’s what. He’ll write to somebody

and complain, dirty streets, dirty weather.

He has plans for a house, real plans

he says, for a real house, and one to suit

his station. He’ll be sitting pretty,

but no rush. He has a word or two to say

to some people first, when he can find them.

7

Nevermind the others,

you can’t argue with a tank, and besides

if you see your chance you’ve got to take it.

You owe it to yourself.

You’re no good to anybody dead.

I’m talking hard cash now. Look

it’s your problem where you get it,

just get it. I’ve seen your sort before,

and let me tell you they know you here,

and no good you acting different

if you want fat steaks and not waking up

dead. After all, it’s my neck too.

Forget the woman. With those legs

she can walk well enough on her own.

Nevermind what my intentions are.

If you want to come through this

take my advice. It’s your choice.

Trust me. You can tell me anything

and I’ll forget I ever heard it.

I know you got troubles, but it’ll take more

than your fine accent to get you out of this.

If you get there at all you’re luckier than most.

Go now, while no one’s looking.

No, the woman stays.

That’s how it is for you now. That’s all right,

don’t mention it.

8

You’re nothing special, and no one cares,

whatever your mother said was true

you can forget.

We’re past that now.

We’ve seen your documents. We don’t care

if they’re in order. The plans for you are our plans.

Your pipe dreams of getting on

need less of this and more of the other.

Just concentrate on the pots and pans.

I suppose you think you’ll be Boss one day.

Well, think again.

We don’t want you to say anything,

because there’s nothing for you to ask.

Everybody’s starving.

Just remember your place

and all those mouths to feed.

Just make sure you jump when we say.

9

FOUR INVITATIONS TO A MAN AT DIFFERENT TIMES

FROM DIFFERENT QUARTERS

(Vier Aufforderungen an einen Mann von verschiedener Seite zu

verschiedenen Zeiten)

i.

Make yourself at home.

What’s ours is yours. Put your things

where you like. You may prefer the furniture

facing the window. Don’t bother

signing for the key.

If you need anything, just say.

ii.

There’s room in the parlour

if you want to join us later,

or you can help weed the garden

if you prefer. We’ve washed your plate ready

and your bed is turned down.

We hope you like it here.

iii.

The sheets are clean.

We try to keep things nice.

Some people are so particular

so there’s a pail of fresh water

and a spoon to rinse.

Stay as long as you like.

iv.

Rooms like this are hard to come by.

I’m afraid it’s extra to stay the night.

I’m a clean girl, if that’s what you’re thinking,

but I keep myself to myself.

There are plenty worse places.

Why don’t you stay?

10

I speak slowly

so that you will understand.

Nothing I say can be turned or added to

or misinterpreted. I keep the words plain,

and I choose not to look at you

due to the circumstances of our meeting.

Like you, I am weary of your problems,

and the blackmail of your balled-up fists in your lap,

and (I keep trying to explain),

this reality that you believe

never quite arrives.

from Blackwater Quartet, selection 50

after Bertolt Brecht

To Those Born Later

(An die Nachgeborenen, c. 1938)

I.

Sharp-suited gangsters call the shots.

Ask a simple question and you drop yourself right in it.

They take one look at you

and decide if you’re in or out. Clearly, anyone thinking

this is a laughing matter better say their prayers.

I make smalltalk about gardening

but live looking over my shoulder.

That man over there looks this way and that

before crossing the street. So calm, you’d never know

his friends have gone into hiding.

Everyone looks down when they speak.

It’s only luck I still have a wage and bread,

but I’m sure it’s an oversight. I have no special place

or rights. Maybe that’s the secret: don’t get noticed.

(Once they take a second look, you’re done for.)

When I eat or drink, I think of the camps,

taste the barbed wire in the bread, and think

how many this water would have saved.

I’m told, nevermind them, you’ve earned it,

but their sly looks are hard to swallow.

I keep asking myself how I can be here,

and how you can be here,

and none of us have any answers.

We read all the right books, and tried

always to do the right thing.

And it wasn’t as if we had any ambitions,

except not to kill or to be killed. Looking back,

I think we weren’t as smart as we thought.

When the bucket of blood is full,

they just get a bigger bucket.

II.

When I came to the cities

bread was a thousand marks

and nobody had a thousand marks.

I went out in the streets with other men

and we took what wasn’t on fire.

So the days went, so my life.

My meals were in alleys, and the women

degraded by the love I offered. Even psychos

have their tender moments, though none

you might recognise unless you’d lived hungry

or seen your family pulped by the batons.

So the days went, so my life.

This was the end of the road.

The cities became what we made them,

the slop of time where choices ran out.

You can blame me if you want.

We all betray somebody.

So the days went, so my life.

It was a good idea gone wrong.

The weight of steel introduced us

to the pointlessness of our vision,

and we were buried together, in one grave,

in the forest whence we’d come.

So the days went, so my life.

III.

When you look back

and see our lives as a lost cause,

and consider our shortcomings, and our

horizons criss-crossed with tank treads,

keep in mind that your looking back

is what we left you. You survived.

We changed countries the way

some people change their shoes, and everybody

talked until they were buried in talk.

We tried forgiveness.

We were hoarse with forgiveness,

making ourselves heard above

the petty brutalities. But we were changed

the way people change

who cannot forgive themselves.

If you think of us at all, your days

sunny everyday, your neighbours neighbourly,

consider, too, that in this life

not everyone gets what they deserve,

but sometimes they do.

from Blackwater Quartet, selection 49

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.

Take a Breath

Observing the process of poetry in another language is not unlike watching someone operate a complex piece of machinery in a restricted space. One wonders how they manage it. There is a recognised comfort zone in apprehending verse written in one's own native language, but to understand work originating outside this zone can be daunting, albeit rewarding.

My own earliest experiences with "other voices" was probably as a schoolboy, through poems from Old English. There is both a strangeness and familiarity that draws one to the verses. Later, when I had the opportunity to offer my own versions of these and other works for publication, it was with the understanding that the inhalation of each breath of my own should be balanced by the exhalation of breath of another poet. That is to say, one offers up a part of one's self to the process in a way that is doubly personal.

That said, poets likely understand the motives for poetry even though they might not entirely understand the technicalities of French, German, Russian, or Spanish, for example, and there is more common ground than not in poems in which the Self is courted or flayed according to the poet's whim.

from Blackwater Quartet, selection 48

White Café

Insect wings skitter upright on the water.

Windsurfers catch knots,

slide past swimmers bobbing.

Rotate the scene. Include the white café,

its patio’s parasols.

Gulls trash-haggle, everything

the same as everything

and still the thing goes round,

a world rubbed down to nothing,

in the distance the sound a human makes.

Figures too small to be real, leap

wailing at lapping water, if it is water.

The white café spins Cinzano parasols.

Permit me to escort you to the edge of this.

A sand grain has commandeered the sun.

Rudders cut faces into keener shapes.

The Day of the Dead

Halloween, or 'All Hallows Eve' is recognised variously in many cultures as a time when the living don masks, and dance around fires and otherwise behave in a way that their Iron Age ancestors would find familiar.

It precedes, by a mere 24 hours, All Saints Day, as though a day of special recognition of Christian saints would be in order, having survived the previous night's debauch and death-dalliance. As its alternative name, The Day of the Dead, suggests, there is an uncomfortable undertow of pagan associations that the Church could never entirely expunge, its solution being to incorporate the pagan traditions into the Christian ceremony.

There's a long history of this in any case. In the second and third centuries after Christ, when the early Church sought to stabilize itself, Greek scholars in Alexandria codified Paul's 'mission statement' by using the structures of rival, arguably more popular religions, namely Hermeticism (cf., Hermes Trismagistus, the syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god, Thoth), and Mithraism.

There are many parallels between Mithraism and Christianity. The former arose 3500 years before Christ, and Christians today would recognise many of its tenets. The epithet, The Unconquered Sun, the lamb carried on the shoulder, the symbolism of the Rock, the Virgin birth at the winter solstice, and so forth, were all associated with Mithra millennia before the Christian period.

It's a popular belief that the reason that masks are incorporated into what in all respects is a pagan ritual, is to ward off evil spirits. This is deemed necessary because at the critical juncture between the Eve and the Day, the membrane separating the world of the dead and that of the living is at its thinnest. One can almost hear the dead whispering to one another, or perhaps to us.

Beyond rooms with HD TVs, designer lamps, and super-fast broadband, something lurks still in our subconscious: the dark, fires and sacrifice, the cold hand upon the shoulder.

from Blackwater Quartet, selection 47

The Secret Forms of Animals

In my diary, the entry for today,

every word rhymes with every other

more closely

than any word rhymes with silence.

Above my house, swifts

dime-turn in snapped triangulations.

Compare the diary’s previous entries: fly-squash

on windscreens in Kansas, or, in the Sudan

the structural integrity of mud brick domiciles.

Across cat’s eyes and double yellows,

the stringy reds and broken feathers

mark the nature of reminiscence, a seething spent,

a perfect circle traced at last attempt.

My raised hand obscures the sun, the swifts

fetching noon’s high blues

in sprints towards twilight, and Cassiopeia’s early stars.