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Blowing up the garden
May. 1st, 2007 12:03 pmOn the first of May we celebrate two things. The international equality of men, and the summery rush of nature surging back through stems, branches and flowers.
Click the picture to see a big strip of photos I shot recently of a typically German pastoral colony of allotments, the Schöntalerweg in the Treptow area of Berlin. It's a fascinating arrangement of space, gardens laid out for nature-loving people who live, mostly, in the big communist apartment blocks nearby, but nevertheless want a habitable "city cottage" to get away to. At this time of year, of course, the allotments come into their own. Wandering along the sandy path between plots, you dream of living in these Japanese-style bungalows. They seem entirely utopian.
Here's a piece of music to accompany your visit, a Brecht poem (from his late Buckow Elegies, the time when he too was living in pastoral beauty just outside Berlin) set to lovely music by Hanns Eisler: On Sprinkling the Garden. Here the theme of equality and the theme of nature combine to make a true "first of May poem". Don't give refreshment only to the handsome, strong plants, Brecht advises a gardener -- the weeds, shrubs, grass and naked soil need water too:
O sprinkling the garden, to enliven the green!
Watering the thirsty trees. Give them more than enough,
give more, give more, give more than enough.
And do not forget the shrubs
Even those without berries, the exhausted
poor ones. And do not neglect
The weeds growing between the flowers, they too
Are thirsty. Nor water only
The fresh grass or only the scorched.
Even the naked soil you must refresh.
Of, if you prefer, here's the Google translation, "On Blowing Up The Garden":
Oh blowing up the garden to encourage the green. To Wässern thirst towards trees, give more as enough, give more, give more, give more than enough. And do not forget also the bush work, also the berryless, that did not exhaust, and do not over-see between the flowers weeds, which have also thirst. Still pour only the fresh lawn, or the verse-confined only, also the naked soil erfrische you, erfrische you.
Alas, "blowing up the garden to encourage the green" is somewhat closer to the reality of democratic justice in today's world.
Click the picture to see a big strip of photos I shot recently of a typically German pastoral colony of allotments, the Schöntalerweg in the Treptow area of Berlin. It's a fascinating arrangement of space, gardens laid out for nature-loving people who live, mostly, in the big communist apartment blocks nearby, but nevertheless want a habitable "city cottage" to get away to. At this time of year, of course, the allotments come into their own. Wandering along the sandy path between plots, you dream of living in these Japanese-style bungalows. They seem entirely utopian.
Here's a piece of music to accompany your visit, a Brecht poem (from his late Buckow Elegies, the time when he too was living in pastoral beauty just outside Berlin) set to lovely music by Hanns Eisler: On Sprinkling the Garden. Here the theme of equality and the theme of nature combine to make a true "first of May poem". Don't give refreshment only to the handsome, strong plants, Brecht advises a gardener -- the weeds, shrubs, grass and naked soil need water too:
O sprinkling the garden, to enliven the green!
Watering the thirsty trees. Give them more than enough,
give more, give more, give more than enough.
And do not forget the shrubs
Even those without berries, the exhausted
poor ones. And do not neglect
The weeds growing between the flowers, they too
Are thirsty. Nor water only
The fresh grass or only the scorched.
Even the naked soil you must refresh.
Of, if you prefer, here's the Google translation, "On Blowing Up The Garden":
Oh blowing up the garden to encourage the green. To Wässern thirst towards trees, give more as enough, give more, give more, give more than enough. And do not forget also the bush work, also the berryless, that did not exhaust, and do not over-see between the flowers weeds, which have also thirst. Still pour only the fresh lawn, or the verse-confined only, also the naked soil erfrische you, erfrische you.
Alas, "blowing up the garden to encourage the green" is somewhat closer to the reality of democratic justice in today's world.