Life and Existence

It is a period between two wars—the long week-end it has been called.

 

Timor mortis conturbat me.

 

Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.

 

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus.

 

Lugete, O Veneres Cupidinesque,

 

My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath:—a source of little visible delight, but necessary.

 

Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers,

 

Do you believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe! If you believe, clap your hands!

 

To die will be an awfully big adventure.

 

When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.

 

Like shadows of the plumbing that is all that is left of the great city.

 

I think I was cold in the womb.

 

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day.

 

The dead will think the living are worth it we will know Who we are And we will all enlist again.

 

And here face downward in the sun To feel how swift how secretly The shadow of the night comes on.

 

There with vast wings across the canceled skies, There in the sudden blackness the black pall Of nothing, nothing, nothing—nothing at all.

 

Petersburg! I still possess a list of addresses, Which will help me to hear the voices of the dead.

 

Petersburg! I still possess a list of addresses, Which will help me to hear the voices of the dead.

 

Build then the ship of death, for you must take the longest journey, to oblivion.

 

Build then the ship of death, for you must take the longest journey, to oblivion.

 

Reach me a gentian, give me a torch! Let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of a flower down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September to the sightless realm where darkness is awake upon the dark.

 

For he seemed to me again like a king, Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld, Now due to be crowned again.

 

Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

 

Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.