Page 643 Chapter 14: Poetry bertolt brecht

Sunday shuts down on this twentieth-century evening.

The El passes. Twilight and bulb define

the brown room, the overstuffed plum sofa,

the boy, and the girl’s thin hands above his head.

A neighbor radio sings stocks, news, serenade. 5

He sits at the table, head down, the young clear neck exposed,

watching the drugstore sign from the tail of his eye;

tattoo, neon, until the eye blears, while his

solicitous tall sister, simple in blue, bending

behind him, cuts his hair with her cheap shears. 10

The arrow’s electric red always reaches its mark,

successful neon! He coughs, impressed by that precision.

His child’s forehead, forever protected by his cap,

is bleached against the lamplight as he turns head

and steadies to let the snippets drop. 15

Erasing the failure of weeks with level fingers,

she sleeks the fine hair, combing: “You’ll look fine tomorrow!

You’ll surely find something, they can’t keep turning you down;

the finest gentleman’s not so trim as you!” Smiling, he raises

the adolescent forehead wrinkling ironic now. 20

He sees his decent suit laid out, new-pressed,

his carfare on the shelf. He lets his head fall, meeting

her earnest hopeless look, seeing the sharp blades splitting,

the darkened room, the impersonal sign, her motion,

the blue vein, bright on her temple, pitifully beating. 25

The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting,

The oranges are piled in their creosote dumps;

You’re flying them back to the Mexican border

To pay all their money to wade back again.

Refrain:

Goodbye to my Juan, Goodbye Rosalita; 5

Adiós mis amigos, Jesús and Marie,

You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane:

All they will call you will be deportee.

My father’s own father he waded that river;

They took all the money he made in his life; 10

My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees

And they rode the truck till they took down and died.

Some of us are illegal and some are not wanted,

Our work contract’s out and we have to move on;

Six hundred miles to that Mexico border, 15

They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,

We died in your valleys and died on your plains;

We died neath your trees and we died in your bushes,

Both sides of this river we died just the same. 20

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,

A fireball of lightning and shook all our hills.

Who are all these friends all scattered like dry leaves?

The radio says they are just deportees.

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards? 25

Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?

To fall like dry leaves to rot on my top soil

And be called by no name except deportees?

NAZIM HIKMET (1902–1963)

About Your Hands and Lies (1949)

Translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk.

Your hands grave like all stones,

sad like all songs sung in prison,

clumsy and heavy like all beasts of burden,

your hands that are like the sullen faces of hungry children.

Your hands nimble and light like bees, 5

full like breasts with milk,

brave like nature,

your hands that hide their friendly softness under their rough

skin.

this world rests on your hands.

People, oh my people,

they feed you with lies.

But you’re hungry,

you need to be fed with meat and bread. 15

And never once eating a full meal at a white table,

you leave this world where every branch is loaded with fruit.

Oh my people,

especially those in Asia, Africa,

the Near East, Middle East, Pacific islands 20

and my countrymen—

I mean, more than seventy percent of all people—

you are old and absent-minded like your hands,

you are curious, amazed, and young like your hands.

Oh my people, 25

my European, my American,

you are awake, bold, and forgetful like your hands,

like your hands you’re quick to seduce,

easy to deceive . . .

People, oh my people, 30

if the antennas are lying,

if the presses are lying,

if the books lie,

if the poster on the wall and the ad in the column lie,

if the naked thighs of girls on the white screen lie, 35

if the prayer lies,

if the lullaby lies,

if the dream is lying,

if the violin player at the tavern is lying,

if the moonlight on the nights of hopeless days lies, 40

if the voice lies,

if the word lies,

if everything but your hands,

if everyone, is lying,

it’s so your hands will be obedient like clay, 45

blind like darkness,

stupid like sheep dogs,

it’s so your hands won’t rebel.

And it’s so that in this mortal, this livable world

—where we are guests so briefly anyway— 50

this merchant’s empire, this cruelty, won’t end.

Landlord, landlord,

My roof has sprung a leak.

Don’t you ’member I told you about it

Way last week?

Landlord, landlord, 5

These steps is broken down.

When you come up yourself

It’s a wonder you don’t fall down.

Ten Bucks you say I owe you?

Ten Bucks you say is due? 10

Well, that’s Ten Bucks more’n I’ll pay you

Till you fix this house up new.

What? You gonna get eviction orders?

You gonna cut off my heat?

You gonna take my furniture and 15

Throw it in the street?

Um-huh! You talking high and mighty.

Talk on—till you get through.

You ain’t gonna be able to say a word

If I land my fist on you. 20

Police! Police!

Come and get this man!

He’s trying to ruin the government

And overturn the land!

Copper’s whistle! 25

Patrol bell!

Arrest.

Iron cell.

Headlines in press: 30

man threatens landlord

•

•    •

•

•    •

Down the dead streets of sun-stoned Frederiksted,¹

the first free port to die for tourism,

strolling at funeral pace, I am reminded

of life not lost to the American dream;

but my small-islander’s simplicities 5

can’t better our new empire’s civilized

exchange of cameras, watches, perfumes, brandies

for the good life, so cheaply underpriced

that only the crime rate is on the rise

in streets blighted with sun, stone arches 10

and plazas blown dry by the hysteria

of rumour. A condominium drowns

in vacancy; its bargains are dusted,

but only a jewelled housefly drones

over the bargains. The roulettes spin 15

rustily to the wind—the vigorous trade

that every morning would begin afresh

by revving up green water round the pierhead

heading for where the banks of silver thresh.

Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter,

Out of black bean and wet slate bread,

Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar,

Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies,

They Lion grow. 5

Out of the gray hills

Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride,

West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of buried aunties,

Mothers hardening like pounded stumps, out of stumps,

Out of the bones’ need to sharpen and the muscles’ to stretch, 10

They Lion grow.

Earth is eating trees, fence posts,

Gutted cars, earth is calling in her little ones,

“Come home, Come home!” From pig balls,

From the ferocity of pig driven to holiness, 15

From the furred ear and the full jowl come

The repose of the hung belly, from the purpose

They Lion grow.

From the sweet glues of the trotters

Come the sweet kinks of the fist, from the full flower 20

Of the hams the thorax of caves,

From “Bow Down” come “Rise Up,”

Come they Lion from the reeds of shovels,

The grained arm that pulls the hands,

They Lion grow. 25

From my five arms and all my hands,

From all my white sins forgiven, they feed,

From my car passing under the stars,

They Lion, from my children inherit,

From the oak turned to a wall, they Lion, 30

From they sack and they belly opened

And all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth

They feed they Lion and he comes.

This dungeon

Makes the mind weary

Kneaded with the sight of

A million stones

Passing through my hands 5

I see the flesh sticking like hair

On thorns

Against the grating rocks

Of these hills dug for gold,

And life is bitter here. 10

Crawling through the day

In a sleepwalker’s dream,

Frightening the night away with my snores,

I dream of the diminished breath

Of miners planted in the stones— 15

The world is not at ease

But quakes under the march of our boots

Tramping the dust under our feet. . . .

Click, clack, our picks knock for life

Until the eyes are dazed 20

Counting the rubble of scattered stones.

Day and night are one,

but I know each day dawns

And the heated sun licks every shrub dry

While we who burrow the earth 25

Tame the dust with our lungs.

Click, clack we knock with picks

And our minds

Drone with the voices of women

Harassing our loins 30

To force courage into the heart.

Wherefore might we scorn their sacrifice

Made in blood,

Greater that the blood of men

Sacrificed to the earth 35

For its possession!

And so

With our hands manacled

With weariness 40

We mine

Till the mind is numb

And ceases to ask. . . .

MARGE PIERCY (b. 1936)

To Be of Use (1973)

The people I love the best

jump into work head first

without dallying in the shallows

and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.

They seem to become natives of that element, 5

the black sleek heads of seals

bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,

who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,

who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward, 10

who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge

in the task, who go into the fields to harvest

and work in a row and pass the bags along,

who are not parlor generals and field deserters 15

but move in a common rhythm

when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.

But the thing worth doing well done 20

has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

Greek amphoras for wine or oil,

Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry 25

and a person for work that is real.

This is the story of the day in the life of a woman trying

to be a writer and her child got sick. And in the midst of

writing this story someone called her on the telephone.

And, of course, despite her original hostile reaction to the

ring of the telephone, she got interested in the conversation 5

which was about teaching writing in a women’s prison,

for no pay of course, and she would have done it if it

weren’t for the babysitting and the lack of money for the

plane fare, and then she hung up the phone and looked

at her typewriter, and for an instant swore her original 10

sentence was not there. But after a while she found it. Then

she began again, but in the midst of the second sentence,

a man telephoned wanting to speak to the woman she

shares her house with, who was not available to speak on

the telephone, and by the time she got back to her typewriter 15

she began to worry about her sick daughter downstairs.

And why hadn’t the agency for babysitters called back

and why hadn’t the department for health called back

because she was looking for a day sitter and a night sitter,

one so she could teach the next day and one so she could 20

read her poetry. And she was hoping that the people who

had asked her to read poetry would pay for the babysitter

since the next evening after that would be a meeting of

teachers whom she wanted to meet and she could not afford

two nights of babysitters let alone one, actually. This was 25

the second day her child was sick and the second day she

tried to write (she had been trying to be a writer for years)

but she failed entirely the first day because of going to the

market to buy Vitamin C and to the toy store to buy cutouts

and crayons, and making soup from the chicken carcass that 30

had been picked nearly clean to make sandwiches for

lunch, and watering the plants, sending in the mortgage

check and other checks to cover that check to the bank,

and feeling tired, wishing she had a job, talking on the telephone,

and putting out newspaper and glue and scissors 35

on the kitchen table for her tired, bored child and squinting

her eyes at the clock waiting for Sesame Street¹ to begin

again. Suddenly, after she went upstairs to her bedroom

with a book, having given up writing as impossible, it was

time to cook dinner. But she woke up on the second day 40

with the day before as a lesson in her mind. Then an old

friend called who had come to town whom she was eager

to see and she said, “Yes, I’m home with a sick child,” and

they spent the morning talking. She was writing poetry and

teaching she said. He had written four books he 45

said. Her daughter showed him her red and blue and

orange colored pictures. She wished he didn’t have to leave

so early, she thought but didn’t say, and went back to pick

up tissue paper off the floor and fix lunch for her and her

child and begin telephoning for babysitters because she 50

knew she had to teach the next day. And the truth was,

if she did not have a sick child to care for, she was

not sure she could write anyway because the kitchen was

still there needing cleaning, the garden there needing

weeding and watering, the living room needing curtains, 55

the couch needing pillows, a stack of mail needing answers

(for instance if she didn’t call the woman who had lived

in her house the month before about the phone bill soon,

she would lose a lot of money). All besides, she had

nothing to write. She had had fine thoughts for writing the 60

night before but in the morning they took on a sickly

complexion. And anyway, she had begun to think her life

trivial and so it was, and she was tired writing the same

words, or different words about the same situation, the

situation or situations being that she was tired, tired of trying 65

to write, tired of poverty or almost poverty or fear of

poverty, tired of the kitchen being dirty, tired of having

no lover. She was amazed that she had gotten herself

dressed, actually, with thoughts like these, and caught herself

saying maybe I should take a trip when she realized she 70

had just come back from a trip and had wanted to be

home so much she came back early. And even in the writing

of this she thought I have written all this before and

went downstairs to find her daughter had still not eaten a

peanut butter sandwich and she wondered to herself what 75

keeps that child alive?

LAUREEN MAR (b. 1953)

My Mother, Who Came From China,

Where She Never Saw Snow (1977)

In the huge, rectangular room, the ceiling

a machinery of pipes and fluorescent lights,

ten rows of women hunch over machines,

their knees pressing against pedals

and hands pushing the shiny fabric thick as tongues 5

through metal and thread.

My mother bends her head to one of these machines.

Her hair is coarse and wiry, black as burnt scrub.

She wears glasses to shield her intense eyes.

A cone of orange thread spins. Around her, 10

talk flutters harshly in Toisan wah.¹

Chemical stings. She pushes cloth

through a pounding needle, under, around, and out,

breaks thread with a snap against fingerbone, tooth.

Sleeve after sleeve, sleeve. 15

It is easy. The same piece.

For eight or nine hours, sixteen bundles maybe,

250 sleeves to ski coats, all the same.

It is easy, only once she’s run the needle

through her hand. She earns money 20

by each piece, on a good day,

thirty dollars. Twenty-four years.

It is frightening how fast she works.

She and the women who were taught sewing

terms in English as Second Language. 25

Dull thunder passes through their fingers.

MARGE PIERCY (b. 1936)

The market economy (1977)

Suppose some peddler offered

you can have a color TV

but your baby will be

born with a crooked spine;

you can have polyvinyl cups 5

and wash and wear

suits but it will cost

you your left lung

rotted with cancer; suppose

somebody offered you 10

a frozen precooked dinner

every night for ten years

but at the end

your colon dies

and then you do, 15

slowly and with much pain.

You get a house in the suburbs

but you work in a new plastics

factory and die at fifty-one

when your kidneys turn off. 20

But where else will you

work? where else can

you rent but Smog City?

The only houses for sale

are under the yellow sky. 25

You’ve been out of work for

a year and they’re hiring

at the plastics factory.

Don’t read the fine

print, there isn’t any. 30

JUNE JORDAN (b. 1936)

“Free Flight” (1980)

Nothing fills me up at night

I fall asleep for one or two hours then

up again my gut

alarms

and wandering into the refrigerator

think about evaporated milk homemade vanilla ice cream

cherry pie hot from the oven with Something Like Vermont

Cheddar Cheese disintegrating luscious

on the top while 10

mildly

I devour almonds and raisins mixed to mathematical

composed of brie peanut butter honey and

a minuscule slice of party size salami 15

on a single whole wheat cracker no salt added

or I read Cesar Vallejo¹/ Gabriela Mistral²/ last year’s

complete anthology or

I might begin another list of things to do

that starts with toilet paper and 20

I notice that I never jot down fresh

strawberry shortcake: never

even though fresh strawberry shortcake shoots down

raisins and almonds 6 to nothing

effortlessly 25

effortlessly

is this poem on my list?

light bulbs lemons envelopes ballpoint refill

post office and zucchini

oranges no 30

it’s not

I guess that means I just forgot

walking my dog around the block leads

to a space in my mind where

during the newspaper strike questions 35

sizzle through suddenly like

Is there an earthquake down in Ecuador?

Did a TWA supersaver flight to San Francisco

land in Philadelphia instead

or 40

in Washington D.C.? Or what about downward destabilization

of the consumer price index

and I was in this school P. S. Tum-Ta-Tum and time came

for me to leave but 45

No! I couldn’t leave: The Rule was anybody leaving

the premises without having taught somebody something

valuable would be henceforth proscribed from the

premises would be forever null and void/dull and

vilified well 50

I had stood in front of 40 to 50 students running my

mouth and I had been generous with deceitful smiles/softspoken

and pseudo-gentle wiles if and when forced

into discourse amongst such adults as constitutes

the regular treacheries of On The Job Behavior 55

ON THE JOB BEHAVIOR

is this poem on that list

polish shoes file nails coordinate tops and bottoms

lipstick control no

screaming I’m bored because 60

this is whoring away the hours of god’s creation

pay attention to your eyes your hands the twilight

sky in the institutional big windows

no

I did not presume I was not so bold as to put this 65

then at the end of the class this boy gives me Mahler’s 9th

symphony the double album listen

to it let it seep into you he

says transcendental love 70

he says

I been angry all day long/nobody did the assignment

I am not prepared

I am not prepared for so much grace 75

the catapulting music of surprise that makes me

hideaway my face

nothing fills me up at night

yesterday the houseguest left a brown

towel in the bathroom for tonight 80

I set out a blue one and

an off-white washcloth seriously

I don’t need no houseguest

I don’t need no towels/lovers

I just need a dog 85

Maybe I’m kidding

Maybe I need a woman

a woman be so well you know so wifelike

so more or less motherly so listening so much

the universal skin you love to touch and who the 90

closer she gets to you the better she looks to me/somebody

say yes and make me laugh and tell me she know she

been there she spit bullets at my enemies she say you

need to sail around Alaska fuck it all try this new

cerebral tea and take a long bath 95

Maybe I need a man

a man be so well you know so manly so lifelike

so more or less virile so sure so much the deep

voice of opinion and the shoulders like a window

seat and cheeks so closely shaven by a twin-edged 100

razor blade no oily hair and no dandruff besides/

somebody say yes and make

me laugh and tell me he know he been there he spit

bullets at my enemies he say you need to sail around

Alaska fuck it all and take a long bath 105

lah-ti-dah and lah-ti-dum

what’s this socialized obsession with the bathtub

Maybe I just need to love myself myself

(anyhow I’m more familiar with the subject)

Maybe when my cousin tells me you remind me 110

of a woman past her prime maybe I need

to hustle my cousin into a hammerlock

position make her cry out uncle and

I’m sorry

Maybe when I feel this horrible 115

inclination to kiss folks I despise

because the party’s like that

an occasion to be kissing people

you despise maybe I should tell them kindly

kiss my 120

Maybe when I wake up in the middle of the night

I should go downstairs

dump the refrigerator contents on the floor

and stand there in the middle of the spilled milk

and the wasted butter spread beneath my dirty feet 125

writing poems

writing poems

maybe I just need to love myself myself and

anyway