I SAW YOU early today from the window and now I’m writing to you, which perhaps is pointless, since it’s unlikely the letter will reach you, and in any case you’re unacquainted with reading. Also you’re not in the address book, but surely you live enchantingly in your hidden nest where you sleep and dream. Do you think me envious of your domestic life? Apropos: You always find enough food, don’t you? How are your youngsters doing? I don’t doubt that you are a good mother to them and are raising them suitably, that is, very soundly. To doubt this would be to offend you, and who would want to do that? Certainly not I.
How nice it was to watch you. You tumbled with your cohorts in the silver light, the divine ocean of air, racing and dashing back and forth, climbing the air mountains to plunge straight down as if you had passed out and wanted to lie on the ground with smashed wings, which fortunately can’t be because you always maintained your balance and controlled your velocity. I needn’t have feared that in flight you would suddenly slam against a wall or chimney. As reckless as you seemed, you were also wonderfully alert. Now you were flying in circles, now straight ahead, now swerving, and I heard your little voice all the while, which so tenderly befits your way of life, which is more a faint crying than a singing. You speak simply as you can and must. But who could rival your speed, dancer, you who never tire or require feet? What we understand as being intentional you hardly are, but nonetheless you aim well and seem thoroughly happy and satisfied? Why the question mark? We who are stuck to the ground, who are bound by our fears, we clumsy people know nothing of winged existence.
I hope you like it here with us and ask you please to wait as long as you can before you draw away, because when you leave, it will turn cold. But in the meantime you’re still here, and as long as that’s the case, we have summer.
(1919)