DOUBLE-TRACK SILENCE

Closed doors open before me again,
A yawning rift of sky-holes threatens to stab me with lightning's knife-tips if I'm not careful, I'll be careful. - All things here greet me as familiar: the cathedral, long since better days, the lofty row of knocked-about furniture, and the hall of history's portraits are familiar! But in the school days, in the universal corridors of solitude, long unseen faces, echoes greet me, and the inquisition of the inadequate in my black book!


I have never understood: if one grinds his mind with knowledge to sharpen it, and to keep it witless, why should it always be punished? When I came here as a young man: Ladies' wreaths adorned every window, and laughed drunkenly with their cant! What could have happened? Have the truth-tellers and the messenger-wise been driven away? Wherever I stop in the fragmentary moment, I am caught in a cell by fear and the justice of dread!

Snow-white-scrubbed whitewashed-walls tell of betrayals and humiliations done! Behind doors I hear the threats of unfriendly examinations and tests! Inside, every minute bears a doom; Here the reckoning of time is ever ended; In sheep's eyes of deer Innocence swears with frightful humility! - The stranger passing through is here immersed in the mists of lifelessness!

No pardon! No excuse! No forgiveness! One can no longer always trust in oneself here, one can hope with aspirations!