On the madness of friends

This world is not kind to the careless.  Nor to the thoughtful.  The greatest triumphs of repression are the denial of emotion (expressed as revenge or renunciation) and the closing of conversation (expressed … ).  It is a difficult time to look up and see so few in the room and to be so unsure of those few, but there is life beyond this.  There might be life beyond this.  If there is not this, if in the absence of this, if we find ourselves alone… there is still time for the warmth of baths; baths away from any tempting razor.

I offer this fragment from Ezra Pound’s Cantos:

When one’s friends hate each other
aaaaaahow can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
aaaaabut the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
aaaaawhen the salt hay whispers to tide’s change

Time, space,
aaaaaneither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
aaaaadoing evil.
In meiner Heimat
aaaaawhere the dead walked
aaaaaaaaaaand the living were made of cardboard.