QUESTIONS FROM A WORKER WHO READS
        Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
        In the books you will find the names of kings.
        Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
        And Babylon, many times demolished
        Who raised it up so many times?  In what houses
        Of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
        Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished
        Did the masons go?  Great Rome
        Is full of triumphal arches.  Who erected them?  Over whom
        Only palaces for its inhabitants?  Even in fabled Atlantis
        The night the ocean engulfed it.
        The drowning still bawled for their slaves.

        The young Alexander conqured India.
        Was he alone?
        Caesar beat the Gauls.
        Did he not have even a cook with him?
        Philip of Spain wept when his armada.
        Went down.  Was he the only one to weep?
        Frederick the Second won the seven Years’ War.   Who
        Else won it?

        Every page a victory
        Who cooked the feast for the victors?
        Who paid the bill?

        So many reports.
        So many questions.
                                                   Bertolt Brecht
 
 

SONG OF THE MACHINES

Hullo, we want to speak to America
Across the Atlantic Ocean to the great cities
Of America, hullo!
We wondered what language to speak
To make sure they
Understand us
But now we have got our singers together
Who are understood here and in America
And everywhere else in the world.
Hullo, listen to our singers singing, our black stars
Hullo, look who is singing for us…

The machines sing

Hullo, these are our singers,our black stars
They don’t sing sweetly, but they sing at work
As they make your light they sing
As they make clothes, newspapers, waterpipes
Railways and lamps, stoves and records
They sing.
Hullo, now that you’re all here, sing one more time
Your little number across the all understand.

The machines repeat their song

This isn’t the wind in the maples, my boy
No song to the lonely moon
This is the wild roar of our daily toil
We curse it and count it a boon
For it is the voice of our cities
It is our favourite song
It is the language we all understand
It will soon be the world’s mother tongue.
Bertolt Brech

SOLIDARITY SONG
Peoples of the world, together
Join to serve the common cause!
So it feeds us all for ever
See to it that it’s now yours.
 Forward, without forgetting
 Where our strength can be seen now to be!
 When starving or when eating
Forward, not forgetting
Our solidarity!

Black or white or brown or yellow
Leave your old disputes behind,
Once start talking with your fellow
Men, you’ll soon be of one mind.
 Forward, without forgetting
 Where our strength can be seen now to be!
 When starving or when eating
 Forward, not forgetting
 Our solidarity!

If we want to make this certain
We’ll need you and your support.
It’s yourselves you’ll be deserting
If you rat on your own sort.
 Forward, without forgetting
 Where our strength can be seen now to be!
 When starving or when eating
 Forward, not forgetting
 Our solidarity!

All the gang of those who rule us
Hope our quarrels never stop
Helping them to split and fool us
So they can remain on top.
 Forward, without forgetting
 Where our strength can be seen now to be!
 When starving or when eating
 Forward, not forgetting
 Our solidarity!

Workers of the world, uniting
That’s the way to lose your chains.
Mighty regiments now are fighting
That no tyranny remains!
 Forward, without forgetting
 Till the concrete question is hurled
 When starving or when eating
 Whose tomorrow is tomorrow?
 And whose world is the world?

Bertolt Brecht

THE DOUBTER
Whenever we seemed
To have found the answer to a question
One of us united the string of the old rolled-up
Chinese scroll on the wall, so that it fell down and
Revealed to us the man on the bench who
Doubted so much.

I, he said to us
Am the doubter.  I am doubtful whether
The work was well done that devoured your days.
Whether what you said would still have value for anyone if it
  Were less well said.
Whether you said it well but perhaps
Were not concvinced of the truth of what you said.
Whether it is not ambiguous;each possible misunderstanding
Is your responsibility.  Or it can be unambiguous
And take the contracdictions out of things; is it too
  Unambiguous?
If so, what you say is useless.  Your thing has no life in it.
Are you truly in the stream of happening?  Do you accept
All that develops? Are you developing?  Who are you? To
  Whom
Do you speak?  Who finds what you say useful?  And , by the
  Way:
Is it sobering?  Can it be read in the morning?
Is it also linked to what is already there?  Are the sentences
  That were
Spoken before you made use of, or at least refuted?  Is
  Everything verifiable?
By experience?  By which one?  But above all
Always above all else: how does one act
If one believes what you say?  Above all: how does one act?

Reflectively, curiously, we studied the doubting
Blue man on the scroll, looked at each other and
Made a fresh start.

Bertolt Brecht

THE BREAD OF THE PEOPLE
Justice is the bread of the people
Sometimes is plentiful, sometimes it is scarce
Sometimes it tastes good, sometimes it tastes bad.
When the bread is scarce, there is hunger.
When the bread is bad, there is discontent.

Throw away the bad justice
Baked without love, kneaded without knowledge!
Justice without flavour, with a grey crust
The stale justice which comes too late!

If the bread is good and plentiful
The rest of the meal can be excused.
One cannot have plenty of everything all at once.
Nourished by the bread of justice
The work can be achieved
From which plenty comes.

As daily bread is necessary
So is daily justice.
It is even necessary several times a day.

From morning till night, at work, enjoying oneself.
At work which is an enjoyment.
In hard times and in happy times
The people requires the plentiful, wholesome
Daily bread of justice.

Since the bread of justice, then, is so important
Who, friends, shall bake it?

Who bakes the other bread?

Like the other bread
The bread of justice must be baked
By the people.

Plentiful, wholesome, daily.
                                           Bertolt Brecht