Love Poems
BERTOLT BRECHT
LOVE
POEMS
Translated by
David Constantine and Tom Kuhn
Foreword by Barbara Brecht-Schall
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CONTENTS
A Personal Foreword by Barbara Brecht-Schall
Translators’ Introduction
Baal’s song
O you can’t know what I suffer . . .
A bitter love song
However that may be, there was a time . . .
Song of love
The youth and the maiden
Half in my sleep . . .
The days of all your bitternesses . . .
On vitality
Through the room the wild wind comes . . .
Down in the willow grove . . .
The seventh psalm
Heh. Psalm
The eleventh psalm
12th psalm
Remembering Marie A.
The river sings praises
To M
On the way from Augsburg to Timbuktu . . .
Balaam Lai in his thirtieth year . . .
Now in the night . . .
Need for art
There at the beginning . . .
Balaam Lai in July
Song of lost innocence folding the linen
Ballad
Discovery about a young woman
Ballad of the faithless women
The song of Surabaya-Johnny
The guest
He was easy to get . . .
Again and again . . .
Tercets on love—The lovers
Spring
The first sonnet
The third sonnet
Eighth sonnet
Buying oranges
When we had been apart . . .
The twelfth sonnet
The thirteenth sonnet
Thoughts of a stripper during the act of undressing
Nanna’s song
The madam’s song
Song of the widow in love
The actress in exile
When I’d reported to the couple, thus . . .
I shall go with the one I love
To be read mornings and evenings . . .
Kin-Jeh said of his sister
Our unceasing conversation . . .
Kin-Jeh’s second poem about his sister
Fruitless call
19th Sonnet
The good comrade M.S.
The 21st sonnet
Sonnet
Sonnet No. 19
Then at the last, when death . . .
Wreckage
Remembering my little teacher . . .
In the ninth year fleeing from Hitler . . .
My general has fallen . . .
After the death of my collaborator M.S.
When I came back from Saint-Nazaire . . .
Instruction in love
The song of fraternization
The plum song
Sauna and sex
Weaknesses
When I left you, afterwards . . .
My love gave me a little branch . . .
Seven roses the rosebush has . . .
When it is fun with you . . .
Smoke
Love song from a bad time
Send me a leaf . . .
When I have to leave you dear . . .
Notes
A PERSONAL FOREWORD
Papa loved women, many women. Anyone who knew him would not dispute this fact, and he was faithful to each of them. I still do not understand the attraction that they felt for him. To be completely honest, Bidi—the nickname that I used for him, a name he had acquired as a little boy in Augsburg—did not wash enough and wore long underwear, well after it was fashionable. But even as a young girl, I remember that women, like flies to honey, would always find him witty and charming. His passion, whether expressed to women, to his art, or to his children, seemed all-encompassing.