(Translated by the Man At the Next Table)

Three (sen-

timental) sophmores

are remis-

cing

Ah-life is sad. Most exquisitely sad.

Most richly, yearning, sweetly-somber sad,

With husky throated horns forever blowing

Blended music in a minor key. Slow

Sweeps the pageant by, the side procession

Of this silly world, muted, once removed,

Softened in velvet to the drowsy mind.

About the

past,

A face in the crowd, a form remembered,

A swift illusion in the color, held

For a moment gone;

A voice, memory, a sweet memory:

and their

words...

fragments.

Once last year...stayed up till morning..and sang

To the stars... 'Deep in my heart, There is a dream..'

And I remember..freshman year..gone now,

Great boys, great fellows..no one like them since."

They are si-

lent, think-

ing.

The smoke breaks into visible music.

Floating overhead, the curling volumes

Seem all music, seem the long slopes of song,

Strata that shift and melt and are blown down.

Words, what poor pale muttering sounds are words

To tell those golden, lost, once-only nights.

They wish.

Oh, these four walls should spring cathedral-high,

Open to heaven, there should be a chant,

Words, colors, memory and music mixed

In praise of what mere words can not bring back.

They speak

again.

But that was long ago and far away.

Oh well. And that is life. And life is sad.

And are

translated

So fiercely-tender, aching, throat-full sad

And beautiful that it would burst the heart -

If it were not that the heart endures this -

God knows why - and finds itself somehow

by the Man

at the next

table

In love with life, and somehow, therefore, sad.