Volker Braun Poems

As the army of Chin
Marches out of its foxhole
After 2000 years
Carefully
...

Aus den Bunkern
Unter dem Platz des Himmlischen Friedens
Fahren die Panzerwagen
In die Menge
...

I´m still here, though my country´s gone West.
PEACE TO THE PALACES AND DEVIL TAKE THE REST.
I gave it the elbow and heave-ho once myself.
...

Guevara under the march route with severed
Hands, „no more burrowing for him,"
When ideas are buried
The bones emerge
...

Lengths of wire, the brackish water has a barbed smile
Silently, like a dream, the mines drift
Like dinner plates back into the cupboard. Surreal moment:
On tiptoe where the world is sundering, and not a shot.
...

Did you use the night? - I practised hopeful
Waiting. - Who for? What for? - You also know, do you,
The pain, sweet pain, of loving the one unknown? -
...

To stride calmly into the wall of fog.
His arms swing, not smoothly but regularly.
Exactly pursuing the paper above the abyss.
...

Now, Brecht, did you let your cigar go out?
In the course of the earthquakes we provoked
In those states that were built on sand.
...

Ceasar wathed from his tumulus
The distant sea battle Barbarian ships the maker of history
Sweating with fear After that is was a quetsion
Of sheer courage and billhooks
...

She dances on the graves, with grace
With her rogue memory. WE KNOW
WE CAN'T HOLD ON TO ANYTHING. She
Calls up the croaked, the forgotten, them
...