<p>459. ALTER EGO
<a l:href="#c_490"><sup>{*}</sup></a></p>As a lily that looks at itself in a streamso my very first song was your mirrored dream.But whose was the triumph? Who gave and who took?Was it brook from blossom or blossom from brook?Your childish soul could so easily guessthe thoughts I was inwardly moved to express.Though I live without you by a dreary decree,we are one — for nothing can part you and me.The grass on your grave in a distant climeis here in my heart growing greener with time.When I happen to glance at the stars, then I knowthat together like gods we had looked at their glow.Love has words of its own, these words cannot die.Our singular case special judges will try:in the crowd they will notice us right from the start —for as one we will come — we whom nothing can part.<Осень 1943><p>460. «When life is torture, when hope is a traitor…»
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Die Gleichm"ossigkeit des Loufes der Zeit in allen K"opfen beweist mehr, als irgend etwas, dass wir Alle in denselben Traum versenkt sind, ja dass es Ein Wesen ist, welches ihrt tr"aumt.
[20]
Schopenhauer, Porergo, II, 29.When life is torture, when hope is a traitor,when in the battle my soul must surrender,then daily, nightly I lower my eyelids,and all is revealed in a strange flash of splendor.Like nights in autumn, life's darkness seems denserbetween the distant and thunderless flashes.Alone the starlight is endlessly friendly —the stars that sparkle through golden bright lashes.And all this lambent abyss is so limpid,so close is the sky to my spirit's desire,that, straight out of time into timelessness peering,your throne I discern, empyrean fire.And there the altar of all creationstands still and smokes in a glory of roses.Eternity dreams of itself, as the smoke-wreathsvibrate with the forces and forms it composes.And all that courses down cosmic channels,and every ray of the mind or of matteris but your reflection, empyrean fire,dreams, only dreams that flit by and scatter.And in that wind of sidereal fanciesI float like vapor, now dimmer, now brighter —and thanks to my vision, and thanks to oblivion,with ease I breathe, and life's burden is lighter.<Осень 1943>
