but this escape attempt fails too:
even dream time has been voided:
a few breaths and nonsense shakes him awake,
time and again,
like the cartoon hero by the dripping faucet,
, 'The time when dreams still helped" has become a sentence from
a fairy tale-
the next sequel of the adventure
again unfolds only in the cartoon pattern.
At the moment ofwaking
which immediately follows the moment offalling asleep
- ' 'dreams were in the offing' ,-
in the shattering environment,
which had been on the verge ofsoothing itself,
your dyed-in-the-wool HUMBUG breaks forth again,
world-wide and skin-tight.
And even ifyou stare at something-
you now see everything distorted, as out of the corner ofyour eyes:
you grasp the air
after a dog running in the distance
as at a mosquito buzzing your cheek,
and the cat running along the wall
looks like a centipede within reach;
confined by the remotest sight! ;
AND NO MORE OPPORTUNITY,
STALE AIR,
WHICH YOU VAINLY TRY TO BREATHE,
EVERYTHING AS IT IS,
EACH ONE FORCED BACK INTO HIS NICHE.
(' 'I waited on the chaise lounge for the meaning oflife to come back
to me," stood in an old autobiography.)
- And if it is like that,
and when it was like that,
all as in the old days,
and when the legs still trotted the buried consciousness
dumb-assedly from one place to the next,
-ifonly one knee had bent just once-
you looked, because you had no choice, had no CHOICE,
