IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW

Oh, if you could only see it now! I know many of you would wonder. "Why didn't you marry, little bear?" - My years are still sluggishly knocking, while my naughty, naughty, naughty children-whiskers are not blooming for me! I tread the corruptible path of blind dates. I am learning to know men. 

Clean paper and ink wait diligently on my desk. One experiments: if at first one does not succeed as one had carefully planned, one doubts, and continues to accuse oneself in a bitter way. Yet it can be useful if it does not subordinate everything to its compulsive compulsive regret. If he learns to believe, perhaps, that he has a sure mission on this earth. 

But believe me, the courage of the brave rabbits is their cowardice in flight. So I struggle still between despairs and slothful weaknesses of will - My deceived heart's beating pumps ever more violently. I am consoled, my dear good friends, if you have often visited me on the networks of electric letters! 

I would fain lay my bowed head in my soul-mate's lap. I wish I could link the moments of the Universe with immortality, with invisible feeling-strands. And I say more and more often, I was never a coward, I was only prudent. Wise, prudent herald within myself I rant and rave if my unknown fate remains uncertain. I look upon Being as an escape, not an opportunity. 

With the searching eyes of my loneliness I try to analyze the light-flowers, when they are already straining on budding cheeks, sprouting, or unite in laughter with fruit-ripening merry-clucks. In the translucent richness of their eyes, wild and bolder temptations are slyly lurking...