Brecht

"Virtues, while all seen as "good" in and of themselves mean very little if you are on the wrong side.  You can be brave and honest and full of integrity...but if you're an SS trooper then what does it matter?  Your good traits are only useful if you put them to good ends. Otherwise, you're just a more honest and likeable enemy".

Step foward: we hear
That you are a good man.
You cannot be bought, but the lightning
Which strikes the house, also
Cannot be bought.
You hold to what you said.
But what did you say?
You are honest, you say your opinion.
Which opinion?
You are brave.
Against whom?
You are wise.
For whom?
You do not consider personal advantages.
Whose advantages do you consider then?
You are a good friend
Are you also a good friend of the good people?

Hear us then: we know
You are our enemy.  This is why we shall
Now put you in front of a wall.
But in consideration of
your merits and good qualities
We shall put you in front of a good wall and shoot you
With a good bullet from a good gun and bury you
With a good shovel in the good earth.

Bertolt Brecht

"Are there even words to speak after this? Is there even anything to be said? How can we achieve the "love" for which so much blood was shed? We inherit the bones interred beneath our feet like cobbled stones. They, our foundation, are forgotten, as we wander aimlessly".

Truly, I live in dark times!

The guileless word is folly. A smooth forehead

Suggests insensitivity. The man who laughs

Has simply not yet had

The terrible news.

.

What kind of times are they, when

A talk about trees is almost a crime

Because it implies silence about so many horrors?

That man there calmly crossing the street

Is already perhaps beyond the reach of his friends

Who are in need?

.

Nothing I do gives me the right to eat my fill.

By chance I've been spared. (If my luck breaks, I am lost.)

.

I would also like to be wise.

In the old books it says what wisdom is:

To shun the strife of the world and to live out

Your brief time without fear

Also to get along without violence

To return good for evil

Not to fulfil your desires but to forget them

Is accounted wise.

All this I cannot do:

Truly, I live in dark times.

.

All roads led into the mire in my time.

My tongue betrayed me to the butchers.

There was little I could do. But those in power

Sat safer without me: that was my hope.

So passed my time

Which had been given to me on earth.

.

Our forces were slight. Our goal

Lay far in the distance

It was clearly visible, though I myself

Was unlikely to reach it

.

You who will emerge from the flood

In which we have gone under

Remember

When you speak of our failings

The dark time too

Which you have escaped.

For we went, changing countries oftener than our shoes

Through the wars of the classes, despairing

When there was injustice only, and no rebellion.

.

And yet we know:

Hatred, even of meanness

Contorts the features.

Anger, even against injustice

Makes the voice hoarse. Oh, we

Who wanted to prepare the ground for friendliness

Could not ourselves be friendly.

.

But you, when the time comes at last

And man is a helper to man

Think of us

With forbearance.

Bertolt Brecht