bertrolt brecht

i watched earlier this week a film called the live of others / das leben der anderen and i am still thinking about it. mostly about the stasi investigator reading brecht, the first breathe of poetry to probably leave his lips since he joined. watching him steal away brecht's book from a theatre writer's apartment and reading it alone to himself. brechts words foating up to the screen as the camera zooms away from him at a birds eye view.

this scene is so nice. the stasi officer is inspired to steal poetry and i think finds a little solace with himself, barriers breaking the more enthralled he becomes with the writer and his lady.

On a certain day in the blue-moon month of September
Beneath a young plum tree, quietly
I held her there, my quiet, pale beloved
In my arms just like a graceful dream.
And over us in the beautiful summer sky
There was a cloud on which my gaze rested
It was very white and so immensely high
And when I looked up, it had disappeared.

Since that day many, many months
Have quietly floated down and past.
No doubt the plum trees were chopped down
And you ask me: what's happened to my love?
So I answer you: I can't remember.
And still, of course, I know what you mean
But I honestly can't recollect her face
I just know: there was a time I kissed it.

And that kiss too I would have long forgotten
Had not the cloud been present there
That I still know and always will remember
It was so white and came from on high.
Perhaps those plum trees still bloom
And that woman now may have had her seventh child
But that cloud blossomed just a few minutes
And when I looked up, it had disappeared in the wind.

-Bertolt Brecht, “Remembrances of Marie A.,“ in Die Hauspostille (1927) (S.H. transl.)
(Bertolt Brecht, Gesammelte Werke in acht Bänden, vol. 4, p. 232)

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