Burn Me!
By Paul Hostovsky
No one is reading Bertolt Brecht
in the Bertolt Brecht Hotel. Most of the guests
haven’t even heard of him, though they’ve heard
of the famous complimentary full breakfast,
the comfortable rooms, the luxurious amenities,
and the convenient location–just a short walk
to the Theater District, the Brandenburg Gate, the Memorial
to the Murdered Jews of Europe. And there’s bacon
and sausage and eggs any way you like them,
and muffins and croissants and Danish pastries,
and pancakes and waffles and a veritable cornucopia
of apples, oranges, grapefruit, watermelon,
green grapes, red grapes, concord grapes, pineapple,
cantaloupe, honeydew, strawberries, blueberries and kiwi,
a bank of coffee urns and hot water, an assortment
of teas, milk and honey, cream and sugar and an array
of sugar substitutes. As for the murdered Jews of Europe,
many of them had likely heard of Bertolt Brecht,
perhaps read one of his poems, or hummed a song
from one of his plays as they went about doing
what the living do. And though he wasn’t a Jew,
he fled Nazi Germany in 1933 and didn’t come back
until after the war. In his poem ”Die Bücherverbrennung,”
a banished poet discovers his works are not on the list
of books to be burned by the fascist regime, and cries out:
“Burn me! I order you to burn me!” For the sake of appearances
there’s a framed photograph in the eponymous hotel lobby
of the bespectacled, unsmiling Brecht–a poet and playwright
who rejected the comfortable, the convenient, the easy,
who wanted to leave his audiences hungry, and uncomfortable
with what he showed them—injustice, exploitation,
complacency—so they would be moved to go forth
and make change in the world. He didn’t want them satisfied,
sated. He wanted them hungry. Uncomfortable. Burning.
Paul Hostovsky (he/him) has won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and has been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Only Poems, The Writer’s Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog. His latest book of poems is Perfect Disappearances (Kelsay, 2025). He makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter and braille instructor. Visit him at: https://paulhostovsky.com/
Artwork Source: “An Old Woman Burning Papers,” by Nicolai Abraham Abildgaard. From the Public Domain.
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