“in the bitterness / i would have stayed up with you all night / had i known how to save a life”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday:

The Neighbor, Bertolt Brecht, tr. unknown

I am the neighbor. The one who turned him in.
We don't want an agitator
here in our building.

When we hung out the swastika,
He didn't hang one out.
When we asked him why he didn't,
He asked us if we had any room in our little apartment
Where we live with four children, for a flag pole.
When we told him that we believed in the future,
He laughed.

We didn't like that they beat him up
In the stairwell. And tore up his jacket, too.
They shouldn't have done that.
None of us have a lot of jackets.

At least he is gone now, and the building is quiet.
We have enough worries, so
It's important to at least have peace and quiet.

Of course we see how some folks
Look the other way, when they meet us.
But those who took him away, say
That we did the right thing.


Brecht (1898-1956) was a modernist German playwright and opera-librettist, as well as poet. He was fiercely anti-Nazi, and left Germany in February 1933, just after Hitler took power. He returned to Germany in 1948 after being subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

---L.

Subject quote from How to Save a Life, The Fray.

Comments

[cmcmck]

He lived in Augsburg and we've visited his house there.