ALLEY-HOLES

We are fleeing, we are fleeing: from the troubled memories of old grievances, worries, and blunders, which memory has kept as the shame of failure, from the indelible traces, the indelible dreams, which are fading fast like mists into nothing: from body and soul we are made of pain, of bitter bile.

And where is our happier, more teachable present, our secret time of peace, when we were still jubilant and exultant, when we were still smiling? - My soul wounds burst out of the craters of my eyes in dirty grey confetti: "I ought to slap that boy twice! He'd learn to keep order!" - I have listened to and endured the agonizing mimicry of many a sitok-word. 
I longed for it in vain, but I could hardly have found a better place of rest and repose, at most, in my home against the alley-holes of life! - All is now final! A happier, nobler and holier task, which bore responsibility and gave sustenance, is rusting and long since half dead!

The chain of connections in the stumps of my brain has long since been scrambling, - and now it would be so good to sway in my mother's harmonious lap, on the field of happiness thought lost! I gaze eagerly and insatiably at the map-system of cosmos, and secretly selfishly trust that somewhere far away You do exactly the same.

The immortal and passable way of stars is as one that is cut out for a lonely earthling with a broken voice. Both oppressive and oppressive burdens sooner or later vanish. The secret wounds, the broken tear-balls, flow on freely, and man is slowly emptied in the prison of emptiness; in soul, perhaps, he is annihilated!