by Bertolt Brecht

Bad Time for Poetry

Yes, I know: only the happy man
Is liked. His voice

Is good to hear. His face is handsome.

In my poetry a rhyme

Would seem to me almost insolent.

Inside me contend

Delight at the apple tree in blossom

And horror at the house-painter’s speeches.

But only the second

Drives me to my desk.

Changing the Wheel

I sit by the roadside

The driver changes the wheel.

I do not like the place I have come from.

I do not like the place I am going to.

Why with impatience do I

Watch him changing the wheel?

from Letter to the Actor Charles Laughton

Concerning the Work on the Play

The Life of Galileo

Again and again I turned actor, demonstrating

A character’s gestures and tone of voice, and you

Turned writer. Yet neither I nor you

Stepped outside his proffesion.

I, the Survivor

I know of course: it’s simply luck

That I’ve survived so many friends. But last night in a dream

I heard those friends say of me: ‘Survival of the fittest’

And I hated myself.