We Are Forlorn Like Children, And Experienced

We Are Not Youth Any Longer. We Don’t Want To Take The World By Storm. We Are Fleeing. We Fly From Ourselves. From Our Life. We Were Eighteen And Had Begun To Love Life And The World; And We Had To Shoot It To Pieces.

A Hospital Alone Shows What War Is.

One Often Feels As Though Something Had Happened Before, I Remember. It Comes Quite Close To You And Stands There And You Know It Was Just This Way Once Before, Exactly So; For An Instant You Almost Know How It Must Go On, But Then It Disappears As You Try To Lay Hold Of It Like Smoke Or A Dead Memory. "we Could Never Remember, Isabelle," I Say. "it's Like The Rain. That Has Also Become One, Out Of Two Gasses, Oxygen And Hydrogen, Which No Longer Remember They Were Once Gasses. Now They Are Only Rain And Have No Memory Of An Earlier Time.

I Did Not Want To Think So Much About Her. I Wanted To Take Her As An Unexpected, Delightful Gift, That Had Come And Would Go Again — Nothing More. I Meant Not To Give Room To The Thought That It Could Ever Be More. I Knew Too Well That All Love Has The Desire For Eternity And That Therein Lies Its Eternal Torment. Nothing Lasts. Nothing.

I Want That Quiet Rapture Again. I Want To Feel The Same Powerful, Nameless Urge That I Used To Feel When I Turned To My Books. The Breath Of Desire That Then Arose From The Coloured Backs Of The Books, Shall Fill Me Again, Melt The Heavy, Dead Lump Of Lead That Lies Somewhere In Me And Waken Again The Impatience Of The Future, The Quick Joy In The World Of Thought, It Shall Bring Back Again The Lost Eagerness Of My Youth. I Sit And Wait.