To Future Generations — Bertolt Brecht, trans. Seph Mozes
To Future Generations
Bertolt Brecht, 1939
translated 2019 by Seph Mozes, who does not speak German,
with help from Dan Ackerman, who does
1
I sure do live in dark times!
It’s unwise to speak a candid word. A smooth brow
Means a hard heart. Someone’s laughing.
They must not have heard
The terrible news yet.
What times these are, when
A conversation about trees is almost a crime
Because it’s full of refusal to speak about the atrocities!
And a person calmly crossing the street
Has probably stopped answering phone calls
From friends in danger.
It’s true: I still earn my living
But believe me: that’s just how the chips fell. Nothing
That I do entitles me to keep feeding myself.
I happen to have been spared. (When my luck runs out,
I’m lost.)
I’m told: Eat and drink! Be glad for what you have!
But how can I eat and drink when
What I eat, I snatch away from the hungry,
And someone without my glass of water is dying of thirst?
And yet I eat and drink.
I’m hungry for wisdom, too.
In the old books it says wisdom is:
Keeping yourself out of the strife of the world
Spending the short time you have without fear
And getting along without violence.
Repaying evil with good.
Not fulfilling your dreams, but instead, forgetting them
Is what they call wisdom.
I can’t do any of that:
I sure do live in dark times!
2
I came to the cities in the time of disorder
When hunger ruled.
I came to the people in the time of uprising
And I revolted with them.
So my time passed
That was given to me on earth.
I ate my food between massacres
Laid down to sleep among murderers
Love grew, and I nurtured it recklessly
Gazing on nature, I felt impatient
So my time passed
That was given to me on earth.
In my time, the roads led into a swamp
Language itself betrayed me to the butcher
I didn’t manage to do much. But the rulers
Would have been more secure without me. That’s my hope.
So my time passed
That was given to me on earth.
Our energy was low. The goal
Lay far in the distance
Clearly visible, but for me
It was hard to reach.
So my time passed
That was given to me on earth.
3
You, who will emerge from the flood
In which we have sunk
Remember
When you speak of our weaknesses
The dark time
That you have escaped.
We went, changing countries more often than shoes,
Through the class war, despairing
When there was only injustice and no revolt.
That’s how we know:
Even hatred of oppression
Distorts your face.
Even rage against injustice
Makes your voice grow hoarse. Ugh, we
Who wanted to clear the ground for gentleness
Could not ourselves be gentle.
But you, if you have progressed to the point
That human beings are there to help their fellow human beings,
Remember us
And try to understand what it was like.
____________
seph lives in chicago and loves brecht