the main poem you keep comin’ back to

  • TraschcanOfIdeology [they/them, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Brecht’s “To Those Born Later”

    My favorite (and by favorite I mean hardest hitting) bit:

    What kind of times are they, when
    A talk about trees is almost a crime
    Because it implies silence about so many horrors?
    That man there calmly crossing the street
    Is already perhaps beyond the reach of his friends
    Who are in need?

    It is true I still earn my keep
    But, believe me, that is only an accident. Nothing
    I do gives me the right to eat my fill.
    By chance I’ve been spared. (If my luck breaks, I am lost.)

    They say to me: Eat and drink! Be glad you have it!
    But how can I eat and drink if I snatch what I eat
    From the starving, and
    My glass of water belongs to one dying of thirst?
    And yet I eat and drink.

    He wrote this in the context of 1930s Germany, and it feels awfully current.