More and more creased each year, worn paper thin,
and still it longs for them all.

So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.

  Sometimes Mr. Cogito recalls, not without emotion, his youthful attempts at perfection, those juvenile per aspera ad antra. One day a small pebble happened to fall inside his shoe as he was hurrying to classes. It maliciously worked its way between raw flesh and his sock. Common sense suggested that he get rid of the intruder, but the principle of amor fati demanded on the contrary that he endure it. He chose the second, heroic solution.

The left leg normal
one could say optimistic
a little too short

The time of apples falling leaves still put up a defense
in the morning heavier and heavier fog the air grows bald

Mr. Cogito tries
to attain pure thought
at least before sleep

Like tents before a storm golden cloaks ripple
a flood of hot scarlet exposes chests and feet

Those who lost dance with bells at their legs
in fetters of comic costumes in the feathers of a croaked eagle

  He writes his memoirs. He is trying to explain the place of the hero in a system of necessities, to reconcile the notions of existence and fate that contradict one another.
  Fire is crackling gaily in the fireplace, in the kitchen his wife bustles about—an exalted girl who did not bear him a son but comforts herself she will pass into history anyway. 

What happened to Barabbas. I ask no one knows
Released from the chain he walked out into a white street