A kind of memory that tells us
that what we're now striving for was
once
nearer and truer and attached to us
with infinite tenderness. Here all is
distance,
there it was breath. After the first
home
the second one seems draughty and
strangely sexed.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander on the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while dry leaves are blowing.

Here is the time for the sayable, here
is its home.
Speak and attest. More than ever
the things we can live with are falling
away,
and ousting them, filling their place,
a will with no image.
Will beneath crusts which readily crack
whenever the act inside swells and
seeks new borders.

And these things
that keep alive on departure know that
you praise them; transient,
they look to us, the most transient,
to be their rescue.
They want us to change them completely,
in our invisible hearts,
into -- O endlessly -- us! Whoever,
finally, we may be.

I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.

This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess.