"Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you. Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you.

And without feet I can make my way to you, without a mouth I can swear your name. ...Break off my arms, with my heart as with Stop my heart, and my And if you consume my I'll feel you burn in I'll take hold of you a hand. brain will start to beat. brain with fire, every drop of my blood."

--------------------------------------------------It would be good to give much thought, before you try to find words for something so lost, for those long childhood afternoons you knew that vanished so completely -and why? ...We're still reminded-: sometimes by a rain, but we can no longer say what it means; life was never again so filled with meeting, with reunion and with passing on as back then, when nothing happened to us except what happens to things and creatures: we lived their world as something human, and became filled to the brim with figures. And became as lonely as a shepherd and as overburdened by vast distances, and summoned and stirred as from far away, and slowly, like a long new thread, introduced into that picture-sequence where now having to go on bewilders us. -------------------------------------------------------If you were a brook and I a stream, We would rush together. And then we would be together in the blossoming riverside: How might I pour myself into you ...such that we would flow completely together, you well-beloved maiden, you! Then would we beam by night and day, married in sweetly gentle waves unto the sea. ---------------------------------------------------------Out of infinite longings rise finite deeds like weak fountains, falling back just in time and trembling. And yet, what otherwise remains silent, our happy energiesshow themselves ...in these dancing tears. -----------------------------------------------------------It is conceit that kills us and makes us cowards instead of gods. Under the great Command: Know thy self, and that thou art mortal! ... we have become fatally self-conscious,

fatally self-important, fatally entangled in the cocoon coils of our conceit. Now we have to admit we can't know ourselves, we can only know about ourselves. And I am not interested to know about myself any more, I only entangle myself in the knowing. Now let me be myself, now let me be myself, and flicker forth, now let me be myself, in the being, one of the gods. ------------------------------------------------------------------