Jan Schreiber ~ Brookline Poet Laureate 2015-17
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  • Shakespeare et al.
    • Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)
    • Fulke Greville (1554-1628)
    • William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
    • Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
    • John Donne (1572-1631)
    • George Herbert (1593-1633)
  • 20th Century Poems
    • William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
    • Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)
    • Robert Frost (1874-1963)
    • Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
    • T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
    • Louise Bogan (1897-1970)
    • Stevie Smith (1902-1971)
    • W. H. Auden (1907-1973)
    • Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)
    • Robert Lowell (1917-1977)
    • Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)
    • Philip Larkin (1922-1985)
    • Robert Creeley (1926-2005)
  • Poems in Translation
    • Bai Juyi (772–846)
    • J. W. von Goethe (1749-1832)
    • Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837)
    • Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898)
    • Paul Valéry (1871-1945)
    • Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
    • Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969)
    • Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)
  • Poems by Jan Schreiber
    • Acoustics
    • Now Winter Nights Enlarge
    • A Little Patter
    • The Inventory
    • Cormorants
    • The Road to Nowhere
    • The Birds
  • Contact
Picture
B E R T H O L T   B R E C H T  (1898-1956)

Pirate Jenny
or Dreams of a Kitchen Maid


All you gentlemen can see me as I’m washing the glasses
And I’m hardly a human being.
And you tip me with a penny and you think you tip me well
And you see my crummy clothes here in this crummy old hotel
And you don’t have a clue what you’re seeing.
And you don’t have a clue what you’re seeing.
But a day will come when there is shouting in the harbor
And you ask, What is that shout I hear?
And you’ll see me smiling there beside my glasses
And you’ll ask, What makes her smile so queer?
            And a ship, a black galleon,
            With its fifty brass cannons
            Will lie at the pier.

They say, Go and dry your glasses my girl
And they pay with a “Thank you ma’am”
And I take it and say Yessir and I make the bed right
(But no one’s going to sleep there anymore tonight)
And they still have no idea who I am.
And they still have no idea who I am.
In the dead of night there’s a ruckus in the harbor
And they’ll say, That sounded very near.
And they’ll see me standing there behind the window
And they’ll ask, Why does she have that leer?
            And the ship, the black galleon,
            With its fifty brass cannons
            Starts bombarding the town.

All you gentlemen will certainly stop your laughing
When the buildings fall everywhere.
And in no time the city will be leveled to the ground.
Just a crummy old hotel will be spared from all around
And they’ll ask, What VIP lives there?
And they’ll ask, What VIP lives there?
And all through the night there will be cries amid the ruins
And they’ll ask how this hotel escaped the gun.
And at dawn they’ll see me stepping out the doorway
And they’ll say, You think she was the one?
            And the ship, the black galleon,
            With its fifty brass cannons
            Will run flags up the mast.

And at noon the shad’wy hundreds start coming ashore
And they will move with deadly skill.
And they will capture everyone they happen to see
And they’ll clap them in irons and bring them to me
And they’ll ask me, Which ones shall we kill?
And they’ll ask me, Which ones shall we kill?
In the afternoon it will be still in the harbor
When they ask who will have to die.
And they’ll hear me in the silence saying, All of ’em.
And then when a head rolls I will say, Yessir!
            And the ship, the black galleon,
            With its fifty brass cannons
            Will vanish with me.


                                           Translated by Jan Schreiber

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