But here, in the murk of conflagration, where scarcely a friend is left to know we, the survivors, do not flinch from anything, not from a single blow. Surely the reckoning will be made after the passing of this cloud. We are the people without tears, straighter than you ... more proud.

We are all carousers and loose women here; How unhappy we are together!

If you were music I would listen to you ceaselessly And my low spirits would brighten up.

It is unbearably painful for the soul to love silently.

And this tenderness was not like That which a certain poet At the beginning of the century called true And, for some reason, quiet. No, not at all— It rang out, like the first waterfall, It crunched like the crust of bluish ice And it prayed with a swanlike voice, And it broke down right before our eyes.

You do not know just what you've been forgiven.

Hands, matches, an ashtray. A ritual beautiful and bitter.