MUSIC OF DRUMBEATS

In the wasted prison cell of my room, barely seventeen square metres, I received the devastating news: You are married, and I can hardly - I can only - compliment you in verses! You chestnut-eyed, ripe chocolate-haired fairy. Thy frail, dirty shoulders like toothpicks stood guard over thee, Thy rosy heaven-smiling face: all merriment, all mute vulnerability!

I must not let thee fade from my heart and mind to a sudden memory, and be but a tattered memory, but to my ever-forgetful brain I will make an eternal complaint in a notebook: among my unimportant, trivial things, as immortal eternity, Thou shalt have a deserved place. - For seven full years now my griefs have been barbed, And with their infectious tears thou hast charmed sorrow and bitter despair With thy self-conscious flirtation, thy sunny happiness. And in rock-shattering sobs

How many a lonely deer on my oak-trees you have cowered! To-day, or perhaps to the distant future, Motherhood, with her fruitful harmony, calls thee: Joy's tidings ring in deaf ears, heaven's music-but to thy heavenly joy it would be as fitting, If for one pure and forgivable minute the

On the wings of reason, evoking contentment, The immortal, embodied All, and thy youthful buffoon's ever faithful word to thee, In our youth we have always felt each other's heartbeats!