A World in Heat!

No, I'm not referring to global warming. I have been thinking a lot about this poem in light of Russia's recent actions in Georgia. This poem is found in the epilogue of the German Bertold Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui Translated by George Tabori [Arturo Ui is a fictitious representation of Adolf Hitler as a mafia gangster in the United States]. This prophetic (and poetic) warning is very relevant to our day and age, and may always be.

If we could learn to look instead of gawking,
We’d see the horror in the heart of farce,
If only we could act instead of talking,
We wouldn’t always end up on our arse.
This was the thing that nearly had us mastered;
Don’t yet rejoice in his defeat, you men!
Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard,
The bitch that bore him is in heat again.