A Bed for the Night
I hear that in New York
At the corner of 26th Street and Broadway
A man stands every evening during the winter months
And gets beds for the homeless there
By appealing to passers-by
It won’t change the world
It won’t improve relations among men
It will not shorten the age of exploitation
But a few men have a bed for the night
For a night the wind is kept from them
The snow meant for them falls on the roadway.
Don’t put down the book on reading this, man.
A few people have a bed for the night
For a night the wind is kept from them
The snow meant for them falls on the roadway
But it won’t change the world
It won’t improve relations among men
It will not shorten the age of exploitation.
from Poems, 1913-1956, edited/translated by Erich Fried, John Willett, Ralph Manheim (Routledge, 1998)
But what I want to say, too, is that as I have read and re-read this poem, it’s been hard for me to think of any line of poetry I appreciate as much as this one:
Don’t put down the book on reading this, man.
I remember reading this the first time and saying damn. Literally. Out loud. I said damn. I said wow. I shook my head. I found this line — sitting all alone in between two stanzas that do wonders in their arrangement and re-arrangement — to be so striking. It is a poet’s line and a person’s line. You feel Brecht shedding the veil of poetry and reaching through the page and wrapping his hand lightly around your wrist. Believe me, this line says. Keep reading, this line says. Don’t stop here, this line says. This isn’t some bullshit, this line says. This is real, this line says. This line — Don’t put down the book on reading this, man — says so bluntly what I need sometimes to be so reminded of. Don’t look away. Keep looking. Don’t put down the book.
I’ve been trying to find the specific translator of this poem within this edition of Brecht’s poetry, not just because I want to make sure I credit the right person, but also because this translation feels so stunning in the way it melds historical worlds. That final word of this line — “man” — set off as it is by a comma, feels almost contemporary in its casual delivery, so much so that it stuns me. It makes the poem feel transformative, of multiple present-tenses. It makes the poem resonate through the decades.
Don’t put down the book on reading this, man. Even now, reading this line for the hundredth time, it brings a tightness to my chest. It stirs me. It calls out to me. Don’t put down the book. It is a better phrase, I think, than something like don’t give up. It is less about progress than it is about attention. It is less about relentless pursuit than it is about acknowledgment. Don’t put down the book. I don’t ever want to be someone who puts down the book. I don’t ever want to be someone who denies someone’s truth. I don’t ever want to say that something is too hokey or too sentimental or too whatever-the-fuck. I want to believe the feeling the first time it is uttered. I want to be kind. I want to acknowledge. I want to witness. I want to keep reading.
That reminder — sitting as it does on its own, lonely line — is a reminder worth repeating everyday. It is something I know I can say to myself the moment I leave my apartment each morning. Don’t put down the book, Devin. The other morning, walking to the subway, I saw an ad at a bus station that reminded passersby that not all homeless people are jobless. I understood the point of the ad, how it meant to reframe some conception that people have of homeless people as lazy or careless. But then I wondered: why does it take a job to make someone worth our consideration? I wondered: what of the homeless person who does not have a job? Or the hundred thousand students in New York City who are homeless? What of them? In whose eyes are they now worthy of respect? Or care? Or love? I wondered about Jordan Neely, murdered just over a month ago on the subway, in a city where, up until 2020, inmates from Riker’s Island buried the city’s unclaimed dead in a potter’s field located on an up-till-now inaccessible island. Our compassion must meet our criticism, and together, the two must open the door to the expansive. The book is here. It lives in the everyday. Don’t put down the book. The book reminds us to look at the world again.
