One says: please no inner life,

manners by all means, but nothing affective,

that’s no compensation

for the insufferable

difficulties of outward-directed expression—

those cerebralized

city-Styxes

when my little prince

pokes his chubby little legs through the bars of his cot

it melts my heart, it was like that with Otto Ernst,

and it’s no different now

the contraries are not easy to reconcile

but when you survey the provinces

the inner life

has it by a neck.