Everything Changes

Alexey Kravchenko

Everything Changes

Everything changes. You can make

A fresh start with your final breath.

But what has happened has happened. And the water

You once poured into the wine cannot be

Drained off again.

What has happened. The water

You once poured into the wine cannot be 

Drained off again, but

Everything changes. You can make

A fresh start with you final breath.

Bertolt Brecht

translated by John Willett

fr. Poem For the Day: Two

Edited by Retta Bowen, Nick Temple, Stephanie Weinrich, and Nicholas Albery

“Everything changes.” and then he changes everything around. He proves his point. The first stanza starts on a positive note, but leaves us with a word of warning – yes, everything changes, but what you’ve done can’t be undone. And then he switches it! Yes, the past is fixed, but everything changes. Things can be different. You can begin again. Even at the last moment. (I find it interesting that he uses the image of water and wine, as if to recall the first miracle of Jesus.)

So which is it? It’s such a subtle shift in attitude - like the view from one window to the next. But sometimes an inch is enough. Sometimes a different slant of light reveals an entirely new vista, shows an open road we had not seen before. We can start again. We too can be changed.