QUESTIONS FROM A WORKER WHO READS

                                                                                          Who built Thebes of the seven gates?

                                                                                           In the books you will find the names of kings.

                                                                                          Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?

                                                                                          And Babylon, many times demolished

                                                                                          Who raised it up so many times?  In what houses

                                                                                          of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?

                                                                                          Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished

                                                                                          Did the masons go?  Great Rome

                                                                                          Is full of triumphal arches.  Who erected them?  Over whom

                                                                                          Did the Caesars triumph?  Had Byzantium, much praised in song

                                                                                          Only palaces for its inhabitants?  Even in fabled Atlantis

                                                                                          The night the ocean engulfed it 

                                                                                          The drowning still bawled for their slaves.

                                                                                          The young Alexander conquered India.

                                                                                          Was he alone?

                                                                                          Caesar beat the Gauls.

                                                                                          Did he not have even a cook with him?

                                                                                          Philip of Spain wept when his armada

                                                                                          Went down.  Was he the only one to weep?

                                                                                          Frederick the Second won the Seven Year's War.  Who

                                                                                          Else won it?

                                                                                          Every page a victory.

                                                                                          Who cooked the feast for the victors?

                                                                                          Every ten years a great man?

                                                                                          Who paid the bill?

                                                                                          So many reports.

                                                                                          So many questions.

                                Bertolt Brecht (1935)

PLEASE JOIN US IN A DISCUSSION OF THIS POEM WITH HAITIAN AUTHOR LYONEL TROUILLOT

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18th, 4.15 pm