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What life is, you should hold it in your hands";(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)"You let it flow from you, you let it flow,And youth is cruel, and has no remorseAnd smiles at situations which it cannot see."I smile, of course,And go on drinking tea."Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recallMy buried life, and Paris in the Spring,I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the worldTo be wonderful and youthful, after all."
The voice returns like the insistent out-of-tuneOf a broken violin on an August afternoon:"I am always sure that you understandMy feelings, always sure that you feel,Sure that across the gulf you reach your hand.
You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles' heel.You will go on, and when you have prevailedYou can say: at this point many a one has failed.
But what have I, but what have I, my friend,To give you, what can you receive from me?Only the friendship and the sympathyOf one about to reach her journey's end.
I shall sit here, serving tea to friends. . . . "
I take my hat: how can I make a cowardly amendsFor what she has said to me?
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