Glorious World
I feel it again and again, no matter
Whether I am old or young:
A mountain range in the night,
On the balcony a silent woman,
A white street in the moonliglht curving gently away
That tears my heart with longing out of my body.
Oh burning world, oh white woman on the balcony,
Baying dog in the valley, train rolling far away,
What liars you were, how bitterly you deceived me,
Yet you turn out to be any sweetest dream and illusion.
Often I tried the frightening way of “reality,”
Where things that count are profession, law, fashion, finance.
But disillusioned and freed I fled away alone
To the other side, the place of dreams and blessed folly.
Sultry wind in the tree at night, dark gypsy woman,
World full of foolish yearning and the poet’s breath,
Glorious world I always come back to,
Where your heat lightning beckons me,
where your voice
calls!
by Hermann Hesse
from Poetic Outlaws
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