Iām in bed, ill. I swivel my eyes
around my room. Through its gleaming panes
an old piece of furniture invites them
to the things standing inside on display.
White crockery, with ships painted
in blue, a harbour, busy people
around them. There are other things,
once in my motherās house, that I look at
with remorse and painfulness today,
and looked at with such joy before
that I desired to buy some more of them.
Each of them calls me back into a time
that was so sweet, but that was not
my time, I was not born yet and did not
yet have to die. And also in part I was
already born, there was in my forebears
my misery today. And one strange thought
afflicts me: I tell myself: Ah, how much peace
existed in the world before I was born;
I alone disturbed it. And itās a lying
dream; this is delirium, friendly things.
How I loved you once, beautiful things,
now there in the sideboard, and elsewhere,
in sunshine and in shadow, and oh what
nostalgia I have to leave you! To the dark,
to go back to the dark of my motherās womb,
to the hard sleep, where nothing more will stir,
not even love, a sweet torment, yes, but
unbearable for me. This is the bed
in which I came out of that blessed dark, 88
weeping bitterly, into the light, the things
that gladdened my eyes. And I know of no one
who more disparages that d...
