There are sicknesses worse than sicknesses,
There are pains that do not ache, not even in the soul,
Yet are more painful than all the others.
There are anxieties dreamed of more real
Than those life brings us, sensations
Felt only by imagining them,
More our own than life itself.
So many things exist without existing,
Exist, and linger on and on,
And on and on belong to us, and are us . . .
Over the turbid green of the wide spreading river
The white circumflexes of the gulls . . .
Over and over the soul, the useless fluttering
Of what never was, nor ever can be, and that's all.

Let me have more wine, life is nothing.