the certainty of a formless kind of
immortality. . .
(Then you read in the papers of some who were struck by this jolt and
you wonder why they are still so few.)
Wherever you look now-everything greenish-discolored
at such moments
as on a too briefly developed photo,
the objects half complete,
and no hope of completing them,
every sight a rotted fragment
without the idea of the plan,
which became lost,
still raw-girdered and already a ruin,
which you avoid, fearing
you will collapse with it
-that also goes for you, and for you there:
your faces-
ready for the scrap heap,
propped up by what subscription? by what theatrical sense? what
troupe with a
Weltanschaung
monopoly?-
faces one would like to break over one's knee-
and that goes as much for you yourself,
one depreciating object among others,
which, having seen all these sights, only glances down along itself,
glimpses the back ofits own nose there,
once left, once right,
excrescence of an excrescence:
-ifonly the eyes would close,
-ifyou could only squint at such moments,
soothe the nausea in the eyeballs,
-and it would just be MOMENTS (after which you could sigh)–
but not this TIMELESS, EMPTIED-OUT, SPEECHLESS, FUTURE–
REPRESSING, INANIMATE, SENSELESS HUMBUG
IRREMOVABLE FROM THE ZENITH, SCRATCHING YOUR
SOUL FROM YOUR BODY.
-Someone has stopped on the street
and cannot go on :
not only he has stopped,
