Mother Courage : Brecht Series 4
[ 4th of 5 poems on Revolutionary Poet, Bertolt Brecht.]
An epic drama of first degree verity
Brecht, master dramatist-poet weaves
shadows and light of human nature into
tales of distress appallingly stark
we are bereft, naked as ants crawling around open sugar bowl
soldiers marching in time, chaotically dazed
What is Courage but the will to survive
forever shifting sands seeking to test Self ?
What is Motherhood when it denies the
identity of own flesh to save a skin of
personal business, avid avarice against
contextual episodic war ?
Bertolt leaves no stone unturned to depict
formidable human traits of abhorance, manipulation, covetousness
Sidles in a microscoped saga mirroring a
macro fresco of muddy colours
violence, sex, hunger, horrible death
nobody is saved from the sorrows of life
its tempestuous passions, scurvy wounds
for it is US, each one putting ourselves
forward as heroes, heroines when our
shreds are woven with victimhood, judgement
lordliness of conquests, diversions, movements
into, out of religious seas of retribution, war !
Brecht’s Eye in Storm sees Self as not
separate from abyssal pits, but parcels
inherent, flowery pictures we paint
all seek to hold together dramas puny
God’s comedy says, take off your masks (...)
Not can we cover up snakehood deceit
with beauty, dark stalks until each admit that identity is nothing but changing costumes
in rides along life’s rivers of own making
Mother Courage, a motif of that which we hide
attachments we seek to tie, life will grab
Nothing is ours for keeps for it is only on loan from an abiding pool offered, then reabsorbed
as lessons are learnt, trophies tabled
Bertolt valiantly depicts that what is labelled
as courage is only a label, as is what we call upright or handsome - nothing is truth except blank frameless moving slates of All Perceiving
We are grasshoppers in summers and winters hopping for mites to devour whatnot in desert or garden, it matters not : sides we shoulder are
own, except when microscopes turn inward
Hair on head of Mother Courage are our strands
fidelities flip as wagon moves with winds blowing
Brecht in opp-art asserts that time is fractured back-forth it push-pulls webs of individual fractals
along similar backgrounds in song until we accede that it is pawnhood to be cut with
shears held against own skin
Salute Bertolt who wrote a colourful tale
in record time, hailed as cosmic masterpiece
may we look past its enticing details into a priceless nothingness to which we all return
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