Only Against Death Does Man Cry Out

God, How Pointless And Empty The World Is! Days Filled With Cheap And Tarnished Moments Succeed Each Other, Restless And Haunted Nights Follow In Bitter Routine: The Sun Shines Without Brightness, And The Moon Rises Without Light. My Heart Has The Taste Of Ashes, And My Throat Is Tight And Weary With Weeping. What Is A Lost Soul? It Is One That Has Turned From Its True Path And Is Groping In The Darkness Of Remembered Ways—

In The War To Come Correspondents Would Assume Unheard Of Importance, Plunging Through Flame To Feed The Public Its Little Gobbets Of Dehydrated Excrement.

Perhaps His Tragedy Is That He Is The One Normal Writer Left On Earth And It Is This That Adds To His Isolation And So To His Sense Of Guilt.

To Say Nothing Of What You Lose, Lose, Lose, Are Losing, Man. You Fool, You Stupid Fool ... You've Even Been Insulated From The Responsibility Of Genuine Suffering ... Even The Suffering You Do Endure Is Largely Unnecessary. Actually Spurious. It Lacks The Very Basis You Require Of It For Its Tragic Nature. You Deceive Yourself.

I Like Prefaces. I Read Them. Sometimes I Do Not Read Any Further.