VISITING THE ELDER STATESMAN

By Heiner Müller
Translated by Sam Langer.

VISITING THE ELDER STATESMAN His health

Is in decline the vodka only for guests

Taking tea his hands The hesitant reaching

For the tea-glass It could be full of blood He knows

The crimes of the century Back and forth

Among the secret powers 30,000

That the British in Greece … 

De Gaulle, the Americans wanted to …

Churchill obtained a salary of … Barbie the torturer

Was the inventor of the Barbie Doll The Heroes of the 20th of July

Were turned into martyrs because the …

Took his hand out of the operation And his money

When Stauffenberg became left-handed The Balts

Saved the Germans a lot of work with the …

I'm afraid of my own shadow

Said Stalin to Zhukov 1946

When Hitler used up the fuel the Gulf War began

And what European Nation wouldn't be happy

Today with joyful majority under the swastika

Of capital's last utopia

How happy the German Nation was for the first time

In its grey history replete with geographical misery

In the freedom from Jews Gypsies Perverts

Communists asylum-seeking scum

The forests in good order and the meadows Until the bill came

What did Hegel know about politics that bungler

Learning from history means learning the nothing

Politics is THE POSSIBLE A man's dream

Out of which no child screams In all languages

The future is called death The hands of the elder statesman

He looks at them sometimes and moves them in the silence

As during conversation His monologue is mute

Looking at his hand hesitating on the tea-glass

Forgetfulness makes for an effective statesman

Your feelings Did you have feelings If so which ones

When they were ejecting you from your last office

Feelings Nothing I felt nothing nothing nothing only the bitter emptiness

Listening behind rumours myths legends

The news is revealed does my view

Of his hands become a picture in the mirror His grief clots

Into my cooler text What's the world got to do with me I

Eat your pictures The truth TRUTH

Is no object The colours of the lies are

My affair I leave the elder statesman

His form in the doorway bent with THE SCIENCE OF RULE

His double handshake With the exalted feeling

That the world passes us by and it doesn't matter

Click here to listen to Heiner Müller reading this poem in German on Lyrikline.org.