ALLEY-HOLES

We are fleeing, we are fleeing:

 from the troubled memories

 of old grievances, worries,

 and blunders, which memory

 has kept as the shame of failure,

 from the indelible traces,

 the indelible dreams,

 which are fading fast like mists

 into nothing: 

from body and soul we

 are made of pain, of bitter bile.

And where is our happier,

 more teachable present,

 our secret time of peace,

 when we were still jubilant

 and exultant, when we were still smiling?

 - My soul wounds burst

 out of the craters of my eyes

 in dirty grey confetti:

 "I ought to slap that boy twice!

 He'd learn to keep order!"

 - I have listened to and endured

 the agonizing mimicry of many a sitok-word. 

I longed for it in vain,

 but I could hardly have found

 a better place of rest and repose,

 at most, in my home against

 the alley-holes of life!

 - All is now final!

 A happier, nobler and holier task,

 which bore responsibility

 and gave sustenance,

 is rusting and long since half dead!

The chain of connections in the stumps

 of my brain has long since been scrambling,

 - and now it would be so good

 to sway in my mother's harmonious lap,

 on the field of happiness thought lost!

 I gaze eagerly and insatiably at the map-system

 of cosmos, and secretly selfishly

 trust that somewhere

 far away You do exactly the same.

The immortal and passable

 way of stars is as one that

 is cut out for a lonely earthling

 with a broken voice.

 Both oppressive and oppressive

 burdens sooner or later vanish.

 The secret wounds, the broken tear-balls,

 flow on freely, and man is slowly emptied

 in the prison of emptiness;

 in soul, perhaps, he is annihilated!