A Worker Reads and Asks
by Bertolt Brecht

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For David Griffiths
Translated by Oliver Reynolds (1986)

Who built Thebes with its seven gates?
Books say it was kings.
Did kings hew and haul the rock?
And Babylon razed again and again,
who rebuilt it again and again? Where
in gilded Lima did the builders live?
When the Great Wall of China was finished
and it was evening, where did the masons go?
Monuments commemorate Roman victories. Who
carved them? Who lost when the Caesars won?
Did the Byzantines live only in palaces
and poems? Even when Atlantis sank
into myth, the sea had to drown
men howling for their slaves.

The young Alexander conquered India.
On his own?
Caesar smote the Gauls.
Wasn’t there at least a cook with him?
Philip of Spain wept when his armada
went to the bottom. Did no one else weep?
Frederick the Great won the Seven Years War. Who
won beside him?

A victory per page.
Who cooked the victory feast?
A great man per decade.
Who paid the bill?

So much to read.
So much to ask.