Strange violin, why do you follow me?
In how many foreign cities did you
speak of your lonely nights and those of mine.
Are you being played by hundreds? Or by one?

Do in all great cities men exist
who tormented and in deep despair
would have sought the river but for you?
And why does your playing always reach me?

Why is it that I am always neighbor
to those lost ones who are forced to sing
and to say: Life is infinitely heavier
than the heaviness of all things.

Nights are not made for the masses.
Nights separate you from your neighbor,
and you’re not to go find him and defy that.
And if you do light your room at night
so that you can see the faces people,
you have to think: who is it?

People are horribly disfigured by light,
which falls in drops from their faces.
And if they’ve all gotten together one night,
you’re looking at a very shaky world
all thrown together any which way.
The yellow lamp has driven every
thought out of their heads,
wine flickers in their eyes,
and from their hands those heavy
gestures are hanging with which they
make themselves understood in their conversations —
and with those gestures they say “I” and “I”
and mean “Anybody.”