On the Infanticide Marie Farrar

 

Marie Farrar: month of birth, April
Died in the Meissen penitentiary
An unwed mother, judged by the law, she will
Show you how all that lives, lives frailly.
You who bear your sons in laundered linen sheets
And call your pregnancies a ‘blessed’ state
Should never damn the outcast and the weak:
Her sin was heavy, but her suffering great.

Therefore, I beg, make not your anger manifest
For all that lives needs help from all the rest.

— Bertolt Brecht, “On the Infanticide Marie Farrar”

A translation of the entire poem is available here, among other places.

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