What is so real as the cry of a child? A rabbit's cry may be wilder But it has no soul.

Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, should numb and cover them. But they were a part of me. They were my landscape.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. (I think I made you up inside my head.) The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, And arbitrary blackness gallops in: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. (I think I made you up inside my head.)

I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me.

What I didn't say was that each time I picked up a German dictionary or a German book, the very sight of those dense, black, barbed-wire letters made my mind shut like a clam.

because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.

I do not know who I am, where I am going - and I am the one who has to decide the answers to these hideous questions.