Enzensberger’s ‘The Peace Conference’

By Scott Horton

An airplane lands with a hundred liars on board.

The city greets them with a handful of flowers,

With a smell of naphthalene and sweat,

With a wind from the plains of Asia.

Beneath the floodlights the liars say

In fifty languages: We are against the war.

Quietly, I consider the liars to be right,

The liars are telling the truth, but

Why do they need fifty hours

For a single sentence?

When they depart, the flowers have turned gray.

The ashtrays overflow with butts joined in solidarity,

With unswerving cigar stubs And unconquerable stumps.

Peace is swimming in the spittoons.

In the White House, under the floodlights

The honest people announce at the same hour

A new truth. The war is growing.

Only the liars are unswerving.

In the White House, the flowers are fresh,

The spittoons have been disinfected

And the ashtrays are as clean as bombs.

A blast of wind passes over the city,

A wind from the plains of Asia. A throttled woman

Whistles this way, as she battles for her life.

–Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Friedenskongreß in: Die Gedichte p. 270 (1983) (S.H. transl.)