| |
I I HAVE so often | |
| Examined all this well-known room | |
| That I inhabit. | |
| |
| There is the open window; | |
| There the locked door, the door I cannot open, | 5 |
| The only doorway. | |
| |
| When at the keyhole often, often | |
| I bend and listen, I can always hear | |
| A muffled conversation. | |
| |
| An argument: | 10 |
| An angry endless argument of people | |
| Who live behind; | |
| |
| Now loudly talking, | |
| Now dimly to their separate conflict moving | |
| Behind the door. | 15 |
| |
| There they seem prisoned, | |
| As I, in this lone room that I inhabit: | |
| My life; my body. | |
| |
| You, of the previous being, | |
| You who once made me and who now discuss me, | 20 |
| Tell me your verdict, and I will obey it! | |
| |
| You, long ago, | |
| With doubting hands and eager trembling fingers, | |
| Prepared my room. | |
| |
| Before I came, | 25 |
| Each gave his token for remembrance, brought it, | |
| And then retired behind the bolted door. | |
| |
| There is the pot of honey | |
| One left, and there the jar of vinegar | |
| On the same table. | 30 |
| |
| Who poured that water | |
| Shining beside the flask of yellow wine? | |
| Who sighed so softly? | |
| |
| Who brought that living flower to the room? | |
| Who groaned, that I can ever hear the echo? | 35 |
| You do not answer. | |
| |
| Meanwhile from out the window | |
| Sounds penetrate of building other houses: | |
| Men building houses. | |
| |
| And so it may be | 40 |
| Some day I’ll find some doorway in the wall— | |
| What shall I take them? | |
| |
| What shall I take them | |
| Beyond those doorways, in the other rooms? | |
| What shall I bring them, | 45 |
| That they may love me? | |
| |
| Fatal question! | |
| For all the jangling voices rise together; | |
| I seem to hear: | |
| |
| “What shall he take them?”… | 50 |
| Beyond their closed door there’s no final answer. | |
| They are debating. | |
| |
II O Fate! Have you no other gift | |
| Than voices in a muffled room? | |
| Why do you live behind your door, | 55 |
| And hide yourself in angry gloom? | |
| |
| And why, again, should you not have | |
| One purpose only, one sole word, | |
| Ringing forever round my heart, | |
| Plainly delivered, plainly heard? | 60 |
| |
| Your conversation fills my brain | |
| And tortures all my life, and yet | |
| Gives no result. I often think | |
| You’ve grown so old that you forget; | |
| |
| And having learnt man’s fatal trick | 65 |
| Of talking, talking, talking still, | |
| You’re tired of definite design, | |
| And laugh at having lost your will. | |
| |
