Bertolt Brecht
CONSIDERING HELL

Considering Hell,
my brother Shelley thought
it must be much like London.
Since I live in Los Angeles and not London
I think Hell is more like
Los Angeles.

In Hell, too, there must be luxuriant gardens
with flowers big as trees
which of course wither at once
if not fed
with rich people's water.
And fruit-markets where great piles of fruit
have no smell, have no taste.
And endless convoys of cars
as light as their shadows, faster than impulses -
gleaming conveyances in which well-fed people
go nowhere from nowhere.
And houses
built for the happy thus standing empty
even when lived in.

The houses in Hell, too, aren't
all of them ugly,
but the fear of being dumped on the street
oppresses the suburbanites no less than the shanty-town squatters.

 

a note on Hell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Translations from the German
by
Anthony Weir

Heiner Müller
BRECHT

He lived indeed in dark times.

The times have got brighter.

The times have darkened.

When brightness says I am darkness

It speaks the truth.

When darkness says I

am brightness, it tells no lie.