Weigel's Props

one little dripping pot

Just as the millet farmer picks out for his trial plot
The heaviest seeds and the poet
Tbe exact words for his verse so
She selects the objects to accompany
Her characters across the stage. The pewter spoon
Which Courage sticks
In the lapel of her Mongolian jacket, the party card
For warm-hearted Vlassova and the fishing net
For the other, Spanish mother or the bronze bowl
For dust-gathering Antigone. Impossible to confuse
The split bag which the working woman carries
For her son's leaflets, with the moneybag
Of the keen tradeswoman. Each item
In her stock is hand picked: straps and belts
Pewter boxes and ammunition pouches; hand picked too
The chicken and the stick which at the end
The old woman twists through the draw-rope
The Basque woman's board on which she bakes her bread
And the Greek woman's board of shame, strapped to her back
With holes for her hands to stick through, the Russian's jar of lard, so small in the policeman's hand; all
Selected for age, fimction and beauty
By the eyes of the knowing
The hands of the bread-baking, net weaving
Soup-cooking connoisseur
Of reality.

From Brecht's poem Die Requisiten Der Weigel.