II
Now that lilacs are in bloom / She has a bowl of lilacs in her room / and twists one in her fingers while she talks. / 'Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know / What life is, you who hold it in your hands' / (slowly twisting the lilac stalks) / 'You let it flow from you, you let it flow, / And youth is cruel, and has no remorse / And smiles at situations which it cannot see' / I smile, of course / And go on drinking tea.
…
You are invulnerable; you have no Achilles’ heel. / You will go on, and when you have prevailed / you can say: at this point many one has failed. / But what have I, my friend / to give you, what can you receive from me? / Only the friendship and the sympathy / of one about to reach a journey’s end. / I shall sit here, serving tea for friends…
I take my hat: how can I make a cowardly amend / for what she has said to me? / You will see me any morning in the park / reading comics and the sporting page. / Particularly I remark / An English countess goes upon the stage. / A Greek was murdered at a Polish dance. / Another bank defaulter has confessed. / I keep my countenance, / I remain self-possessed / except when a street – piano / reiterates some common song / with the smell of hyacinths across the garden / recalling things that other people have desired. / Are these ideas wright or wrong?
III
…
‘Perhaps you can write to me.’ / My self-possession flares up for a second; / ‘this is what’ as I had reckoned. / ‘I have been wondering frequently of late / (but our beginnings never know our ends) / why we have not developed into friends.’ / I feel like one who smiles / and turning shall remark / suddenly, his expression in a glass. / My self-possession gutters; / We are really in the dark.
‘For everybody said so, all of our friends / they all were sure our feelings would relate / so closely! I myself can hardly understand. / We must leave it now to fate. / You will write, at any rate. / Perhaps it is not too late. / I shall sit here serving tea for friends’.
And I must borrow every changing shape / to find an expression… dance, dance / like a dancing bear / cry like a parrot, chatter like an ape. / Let us take the air / in a tobacco trance –
Well!! What if she should die some afternoon / should die and leave me / sitting pen in a hand/ with the smoking coming down / above the housetops; / doubtful, for a while / not knowing what to feel or if I understand / or whether wise or foolish / tardy or too soon… / Would she not have the advantage, after all? / This music is successful with a ‘dying fall’, / now that we talk about dying – / Should I have the right to smile?
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