Bert Brecht: Questions from a worker ...

Who built seven-gated Thebes?
The books keep the names of kings.
Was it kings who hauled the chunks of rock?
And Babylon, destroyed and redestroyed,
Who built and rebuilt it all those times? In what houses
Of gold-gleaming Lima did its builders live?
Where did the masons go that evening
When the Great Wall of China
Was done? Great Rome
Is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Whom
Did the Caesars triumph over? Did much-hymned Byzantium
Have only palaces for all who lived there? Even in legended Atlantis
The night the sea devoured it, the drowning still
Shouted for their slaves.
Young Alexander conquered India.
All by himself?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Had he not so much as a cook with him?
Philip of Spain wept when his Armada
Went down. Did nobody else weep?
Frederick II won the Seven Years' War. Who
Besides him won it?
A victory every page
[chorus]
Who cooked the victory feasts?
A great man every decade
Who paid the bill?
So many reports
So many questions